Similar to the original series in the United Kingdom, members of the public completed a qualification quiz which opened at the start of each series at various times in the year (also known as "registration period"). Applicants would send a premium-rate SMS to a designated number, and answer a question by responding. Contestants would complete a series of interviews before being randomly selected from a pool of other hopeful contestants and appearing on the set in Fastest Finger First. In order to be eligible, contestants must be residents and citizens of India and at least 18 years of ag
The quiz based reality show Kaun Banega Crorepati 12, hosted by Bollywood megastar Amitabh Bachchan, keeps ruling the trends for its contestants and their inspiring stories as well as the questions asked while they are on the hot seat. Recently, in the episode that aired on Friday, host Big B asked a question about BR Ambedkar to special guests social activist Bezwada Wilson and actor Anoop Soni which did not go down well with the netizens. The question was, "On 25 December 1927, Dr. BR Ambedkar and his followers burned copies of which scripture? The options were, a) Vishnu Purana, b) Bhagavad Gita, c) Rigdev, and d) Manusmriti."
After the guests answered the question, host Big B also explained the back story of the incident and said, "In 1927, Dr. BR Ambedkar condemned the ancient Hindu text Manusmriti to ideologically justify caste discrimination and untouchability and he also burned copies of it."
Netizens claimed that the question encouraged "leftists propaganda" and hurt the sentiments of the Hindus. Many slammed the makers for showing that BR Ambedkar was against the Hindu religion and also accused megastar Amitabh Bachchan of encouraging the same. Soon after, #BoycottKBC started trending on Twitter. As per reports, FIR has been filed against Big B and the KBC makers in Lucknow for hurting Hindu sentiments.
Among those who believed that the question was 'inappropriate' to be asked on national television was filmmaker Vivek Agnihotri who tweeted, "KBC has been hijacked by Commies. Innocent kids, learn this is how culture wars are win. It’s called coding." he also shared a video clip of the question asked.
Kaun Banega Crorepati’s ratings have fallen 50% this year after “Boycott KBC” had trended on Twitter through the season. Livemint reported that Television Rating Points (TRPs) of KBC stood at 1.5 this year, as against 2.5-3 a year ago. Television executives claimed that Kaun Banega Crorepati had suffered because it had coincided with the IPL this year, and the lack of studio audiences meant that viewers weren’t as interested as before.
But another factor that TV executives perhaps failed to account for was the simmering anger against the show for peddling what many thought was far-left propaganda. A clip from the show from 2018 had gone viral earlier this year, in which a question had required the contestant to recognize the voice of a “student youth leader.” The options for the youth leader were Umar Khalid, Kanhaiya Kumar, Jignesh Mewani and Hardik Patel, all of whom happened to be far-left extremists. Umar Khalid and Kanhaiya Kumar had even been booked for sedition against the India state.
Some other users had wondered why KBC carried questions on Pakistan, which was responsible for promoting terror attacks in Kashmir. “Why is KBC so obsessed with enemies of our country?? Earlier question was pertaining to Tukde Tukde Gang and today about Pakistan Prime Minister. Are they for real??” a user had wondered after a question around the political party that Imran Khan belonged to.
Yet another question had been around Javed Akhtar’s Richard Dawkins award. Javed Akhtar has been regularly criticized for spreading fake news, covertly promoting Islamists, and defending Tahir Hussain’s role in the CAA violence. But the question appeared to be yet another covert attempt to give him prominence, and the the options for the answers left no doubt as to what the real purpose behind the question was: the options for the answers were Swara Bhasker, Ravish Kumar, Anurag Kashyap, and Javed Akhtar.
Matters, however, had come to a head when a question had featured Ambedkar’s burning of the Manusmriti. “Questions like these on #KBC are DEPLORABLE & must be avoided. #Ambedkar said so many things (Reservation, Islam etc) on which questions can be framed but why pick this #Manusmriti one?” a Twitter user had written.
Things had only escalated — FIRs had been filed against the KBC and Amitabh Bachchan for the Manusmiriti question, and BoycottKBC had regularly trended for the following few days.
Bachchan was the go to guy for the BJP government in Maharashtra when it was in power from 2014 to 2019 and was involved in several of its high profile projects.
Bachchan’s question to a contestant was Dr BR Ambedkar and his followers burned copies of which scripture on the question on 25th December 1927? The answer was Manusmruti.
While the answer was correct, Bachchan faced considerable flak on social media but what has surprised many is that BJP MLA Abhimanyu Pawar from Ausa has filed a police complaint against Bachchan for hurting religious sentiments. Pawar is a close aide of former Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and personal assistant (PA) to Fadnavis before he got a ticket for the 2019 polls.
When the erstwhile BJP government was in power in Maharashtra, Bachchan was the go to celebrity for the Fadnavis government, Bachchan was involved in several high profile projects of the Maharashtra government from being a member of the Task Force for the International Finance Centre to be built at Bandra Kurla Complex to being involved in the development of 10,000 villages through the Village Social Transformation Project where the government formed a body of top corporate honchos to spearhead the transformation of the most backward villages in the state.
Now it’s hard to say to what degree the online boycott was responsible for KBC’s plummeting ratings, but it would likely have been a major factor. Indian audiences over the past few months have been vocal about the far-left propaganda being thrust on them: just last month, Tanishq had to take down two ads and see its market cap fall Rs. 2,700 crore the day after BoycottTanishq had trended on social media. With KBC’s TRP’s ratings being halved in a season that was beset with controversy amid calls of a boycott, companies would do well to realize that their old tricks of shoving far-left propaganda down viewers’ throats isn’t quite working as intended.
The whole town was mourning. Kashmir had gone into a momentary furore at the custodial death of Rizwan Assad, who was yet to turn 29. The school principal, preparing to pursue Ph.D in chemistry, was well known among his student for his humility, soft-spokenness and his acumen at the subject of chemistry. The death of a highly educated school principal would have dilapidated if in any other corner of the world, but in Kashmir it was simply seen as one more addition to the hundreds of thousands who lost their lives to the conflict. A sense of ‘normalisation of misery’, devoured over the gruesome incident and the reactionaries of pseudo-normalisation and peace plugged their licentious eardrums to the truth, to loss and to a perpetual suffering that Kashmir has been plunged into over last three decades.
Exactly one month after the incident, on April 29 DD-Kashir broadcasted the first episode of Kashur Kaun Banega crorepati. Talking about the channel, while trying to restore normalcy in Kashmir, Delhi had come with a new intervention — the setting up of DD Kashir. Entire Bollywood landed in a huge charter for a dance and music evening in the lawns of Lalit Grand Palace on June 6, 2000, to mark its formal launch. Aimed at neutralising the impact of Pakistani media, this satellite channel started creating programmes on the culture of diverse regions of Jammu and Kashmir in almost 12 languages mostly with a very strong pro-centre flavour. Having been almost forgotten for last ten years, the DD seemed to make a new entry into the households of disgruntled Kashmiris with the antic of Koshur KBC
The program had hired consultants who had worked in Bollywood and fresh media graduates, and the stint was hosted by a local comedian. The show that was planned and executed on the directions of centre, with the idea to air television shows aimed to promote democratic values, national unity, communal harmony, merits of secularism and patriotism, highlight the perils of fundamentalism and project the security forces in a positive light, was advertised as a probable champion of Kashmiri language and and the misnomer of Kashmiriyat, ‘Kashmiriyat’ which is mostly synonymous to the fictitious ambience of a falsely doctored ‘normalcy’ in Kashmiri political discourse, medieval or modern.The participants were taken to New Delhi and their travel and all their accommodation expenses were covered. Interestingly, the Government claimed that Kashmir crisis which has been under constant rise since last many years needs such programmes for the reason that “Such shows will deviate the youth’s attention and expose them to other cultures, which will help in bringing peace to the Valley” (News 18, April 30, 2019).The hype was surreal, with some of the protagonists of state perpetuating the rhetoric as ‘the most prestigious achievement’ in history of Kashmiri entertainment.
The recent UN report on human rights projects a gruesome and horrendous state of affairs in Kashmir, with numerous killings in crossfires, destruction of property, sexual violence, torture and enforced disappearances. The state is reduced to a bedlam where subjugation of saner voices is a norm. The show, however, portrayed the fluffy and unrealistic ideas that are completely impractical in a land that has seen thousands of young men being killed, that has witnessedthe ink of scholarships flowing with blood and doctorates flying into human ashes. Education and intellect hasn’t prevented us from being killed, our social roles haven’t stopped the bullets hitting us in our bellies or the pellets blinding us, but a fraudulent-intellectualism is used to downplay the realities that thousands of students have lost their lives, have lost their teachers, their college professors and their Principals. Smiling faces, romantic tenors and hyper-nationalistic comportment, with the carefully crafted questions and conversations in subtle praise of certain political corridors, tried to provide the audience with a fake sense of happiness and content, and merchandise a false commotion of peace and normalcy to the rest of the world. Many a times the show was seen to praise the idea of neo-liberalisation, unpopular policies of past and present and historical adversaries of state like Dogra Kings as the subscribers to an apocryphal prosperity.
Hence, the most important feature of the show, which allows it to be used as means of propaganda, is its ability to have covert, unnoticed impact on people and reshaping their narrative regarding the conflict. The influence is usually in sensual form out of the consciously manageable field, which helps to bypass rational thinking (the emergence of sensual resonance). Sensual resonance may be defined as the creation of certain mood among a wide audience, at the same time propagating certain ideas. It allows to bypass psychological protection at conscious level, which tries to protect from advertisement, propaganda and any form of brain-washing. It is here that sensual resonance is necessary, because its first rule is: “One should influence man at sensual, not at conscious level”. The show has its exact ideological orientation, that is, to create images of perfect subjects, perfect contend democratic society, which were serving to the perfect state. The audience is expected to forget all they underwent in last few decades, the show is expected to work like a delusional band-aid, but over the lacerations which pierce through the body of Kashmir through and through.
The most widespread means of mass media: film, promotional video, cartoon and TV broadcast, have become basic means of television, in the meantime being used as tools for political influence and as such Koshur Kaun Banega Crorepati has turned out to be a modern day Bande Peather, the medieval version of which was introduced and promulgated by Mughal rulers in Kashmir, as political tool for veneration of the kings and at the same time very cleverly reorienting any antagonizing intellectual or ideological proclivities.
You can get our Bank Nifty option tip or day trading tip and we will handhold you through this process of making money in the stock market as in your success lies our success.
You
should Trade Less But Trade Accurately & this is Achieved with our Tip.
