Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar wasn’t hazarding a guess on Aamir Khan’s Snapdeal row when he reportedly confessed that a dedicated BJP team had launched a concerted campaign to cause severance of the actor’s association with the e-commerce giant.
Soon after Aamir spoke about his wife’s fear on growing religious intolerance in the country while suggesting the family should leave India, right-wing groups had carried out a campaign to downgrade Snapdeal’s rating on Google Play and App store.
A nervous Snapdeal was forced to issue a statement.
It had said, “Snapdeal is neither connected nor plays a role in comments made by Aamir Khan in his personal capacity. Snapdeal is a proud Indian company built by passionate young Indians focused on building an inclusive digital India. Every day we are positively impacting thousands of small businesses and millions of consumers in India. We will continue towards our mission of creating one million successful online entrepreneurs in India.”
This was understandably done to force the company to drop the actor as the brand ambassador. The campaign by the right-wing groups predominantly consisting of active members of BJP’s social media team had led to the Modi government dropping the PK star from endorsing the Incredible India campaign- a government of India initiative.
A new revelation has now indicated that the BJP’s social media team was allegedly behind the campaign to ‘teach’ Aamir Khan a lesson for his criticism of the central government.
According to Sadhvi Khosla, a former BJP supporter, who was part of the party’s several WhatsApp groups, a person no less than the party’s social media head, Arvind Gupta had called on his team to sign a petition calling on Snapdeal to drop Aamir Khan as its brand ambassador.
Speaking to www.jantakareporter.com, Khosla said, ” I had supported Modi in 2014 because like other Indians, I too wanted a change. But we didn’t want what’s happening on social media nowadays. Within a few months, I realised that spreading venom in the name of communal politics had become the sole agenda of right-wing groups.
“Since I was a part of BJP’s all WhatsApp groups, hateful messages targetting a particular community soon started flooding my chats. I began to feel suffocated forcing me to part ways with them.”
Khosla said that the campaign against Aamir and Shah Rukh Khan was the ‘last nail in the coffin’ for her.
She said, “First time in 25 years, I was being made to look at Aamir and SRK as Muslim actors even though they’ve always played Hindu characters in movies and are even married to Hindu ladies. The poisonous campaign launched by the BJP’s social media team precisely proved Aamir’s point on intolerance.”
Khosla, however, highlighted that the decision to go after Aamir for his decision to criticise the central government indeed had the blessing of Amit Shah and Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
She explained, “When nothing in the BJP or the government moves without their approval, there was no way Arvind Gupta could have decided to use the party’s social media team to go after Aamir Khan or Shah Rukh Khan without the approval of Shah and Modi. Parrikar was just being honest and we should appreciate his honesty.”
Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar on Saturday described actor Aamir Khan as being arrogant when he raked up his remark about leaving the country.
He had said, “One actor had said that his wife wants to live out of India. It was an arrogant statement. If I am poor and my house is small, I will still love my house and always dream to make a bungalow out of it.”
Parrikar also indicated that a team was ordering and returning goods from Snapdeal — a company the actor was associated with — to create pressure on both.
“When I sit at home and talk to Kiran, she says ‘Should we move out of India?’ That’s a disastrous and big statement for Kiran to make. She fears for her child. She fears about what the atmosphere around us will be. She feels scared to open the newspapers every day.
“That does indicate that there is this sense of growing disquiet, there is growing despondency apart from alarm. You feel why this is happening, you feel low. That sense does exist in me,” Khan had said.
According to Parrikar, as reported by PTI, when the actor made the statement last year, many people had protested against his remark and even uninstalled the mobile application of an online shopping site he was associated with, while the firm had also pulled out the advertisement featuring him.
The new revelation is chilling and points to a sinister design of the ruling party to muzzle any voice that criticises the central government even if they happen to be as prominent as Aamir Khan and Shah Rukh Khan.
