A Twitter squabble broke out between comedian Kunal Kamra and the father of a boy who sang a patriotic song for Prime Minister (PM) Narendra Modi while the PM was in Germany this week, with the latter hitting out against Kamra for involving his son in "filthy politics."
In the video from the PM's recent visit to Berlin, the seven-year-old boy is seen singing the song "Hey Janmabhoomi Bharat" for Modi. Sharing an altered version of this video, where the boy is instead heard singing "Mehngai Dayain" from Peepli Live, Kamra wrote "Now who did this?" in his post on Twitter.
The comedian's post has now been taken down.
Reacting to the edited video, the boy's father wrote on Twitter, "He is my 7 year old son, who wanted to sing this song for his beloved Motherland . Though he is still very young but certainly he loves his country more than you Mr Kamra or Kachra watever u are Keep the poor boy out of your filthy politics and try to work on your poor jokes."
Responding to the father, Kamra, who has been embroiled in controversy on multiple occasions in the past for criticising the ruling dispensation, said that the joke was not on the boy.
"The video is in the public domain by a news organisation. The joke is not on your son, while you enjoy your son sing for his motherland to the most popular son, there are songs that he should listen to from people of his country also," he wrote on Twitter.
Some Twitterati also called out Kamra for sharing the altered video, and called for police action against him.
"The father is guiding the child towards demo singing to PM while everyone has cameras rolling and footage shared on social media, PM got the kid in public domain not me. I just made the child sing a song the PM much rather hear…," the comedian wrote in response to one such tweet, suggesting that the prime minister would benefit more from a song about inflation than one praising India.
Child Rights Body Writes to Twitter
The National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) has sought action against the comedian over the matter and has written to Twitter for the immediate removal of the video from social media platforms.
“The Commission has taken cognizance of the complaint and is of the view that using minors for propagating political ideologies is a violation of the provisions of the Juvenile Justice Act, 2015 and the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021. Further, the Commission is apprehensive that using children for such promotional purposes is harmful and detrimental to their mental well-being,” the NCPCR was quoted as saying by news agency PTI.
Responding to the child rights body's action, Kamra tweeted, "The National Commission for Protection of Child Rights must act for on me for a MEME, that I said who did this for (sic)."
In a video for The New York Times last year, Kunal Kamra had spoken on the large-scale devastation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic in India, blaming Modi for failing to control the crisis.
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