On 17 October, late risers woke up to #NoidaFilmCityExcavation trending on Twitter. On closer inspection, it turned out that over thousands of tweets were calling out for the excavation to unearth the lost ‘Hanuman ji ka manka.’
Turns out, it all started with this very sarcastic but nonetheless ingenious tweet from the parody account @RoflGandhi_.
To cut a long story short, the tweet basically said that a divine ‘Hanuman Ji ka Manka’ is buried under the Noida Film City, and Professor Dahiya of Rohtak University wished that Prime Minister Modi would dig it out, to correct the wrong.
Translated, the above mentioned tweet says, “Professor Dahiya is now expecting the Prime Minister to correct another history by exploring the Bajrangi temple of Navodaya city as he is correcting other mistakes of Nehru. News studios can be settled anywhere, but Bajrangi’s residence is a special place.”
Soon, tweets such as the following started to show up on everyone’s timeline, until the hashtag was one of the top trends of the day.
Truth Behind #NoidaFilmCityExcavation
If you were one of those unsuspecting microbloggers who fell for it, let us clarify that this was an elaborate joke.
But why, though?
As obvious from some of the memes shared with the hashtag, the tweets were trolling Aaj Tak news channel for putting out this headline shared below a day after News Broadcasting Standards Authority issued an advisory to ensure responsible coverage of the Ayodhya dispute.
Isn’t it ironic, otherwise, that the spot where the ‘bhavya Manka’ was claimed to be was right under the India Today building?
A Joke Gone Too Far?
What clearly started as a joke quickly turned messy, as the network received severe trolling online. A petition has also been created to excavate Film City for Lord Hanuman’s temple since.
And it didn’t stop at that. Few enthusiasts took it one step further by setting up an actual Facebook event to gather people to ‘Party at Noida film city for Hanuman ji ka Manka’.
While the event does add that it’s “just a party”, does it seem like the joke has gone too far? Let us know in the comments below.
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