What happens when the Wolf-warrior diplomats are met with internet smartcats on an inventive renaming spree? In a notorious development earlier, China with a move to instigate India had renamed 15 places in Arunachal Pradesh. What followed was a strong rebuttal from the MEA stating that assigning new ‘standardised’ names would not alter the fact that Arunachal Pradesh belongs to India.
But when this news broke out to Indian twitter, Indians did what they do the best – giving it back equal force! It all started when a Twitter user named Harpreet (@CestMoiz) tagged a tweet informing China’s move while assigning Indian equivalents to cities in China – currently under Communist occupation. Instantly, Beijing became ‘Bhujang Nagar’, Tibetian capital Lahsa became ‘Laxmangarh’ and Guangzhou opened up as ‘Ghanta Ghar’!
Suddenly, a host of Twitterati joined with an inventive flair to rename Chinese places of interest. By this time, the country’s biggest city, Shanghai had become ‘Shambhunagar’ and the region of Xinjiang was identified as ‘Shivganga nagar’! A thread of comeback gems followed after the host decided to compile some hilarious replies.
Not just places, even Chinese premier Xi Jinping was also not spared from this renaming spree, who got the new name Shree Jatashankar. As expected, Wuhan got several virus and bat related names, like Chamdagar Nagar (bat city), Covidpur, Keetanu Pradesh (microbe province), Virus-pur etc.
This one too .. Killer!!
— Harpreet (@CestMoiz) December 31, 2021
Xi Jinping : श्री जटाशंकर
🤣
(Courtesy: @redblaze34)
This meme template is not new to Indian social media, for it is deeply inspired by UP CM Yogi Adityanath’s real-life zeal to reclaim urban identities by assigning original names to Indian cities. The laughter riot spread its wings soon with high engagements being received on the original tweets. From Defence experts to established authors, all had their share of laugh at the absurdity of China’s globalist domination dreams. Not so sure about the virus that emerged or the Chinese cuisine that is savoured, Humour, definitely has an Indian variant. But for now, be it at the border or on the Internet, Indians seem to have an upper hand at the ‘The Art of War’.
