On 14th November, several actors and actresses from Bollywood shared an old post on NDTV to propagate a conspiracy blaming Diwali for poor air quality in Delhi and Mumbai. In a post on 8th November, NDTV shared images of Delhi and Mumbai side-by-side with the caption, “AirQuality in Delhi dipped to ‘Severe’ on Wednesday. Mumbai pollution has also worsened, joining Delhi among the world’s most polluted cities last weekend.”
The actors and actresses, including Varun Dhawan, Fahmaan Khan, Neha Sharma, and Jiya Shankar, shared the story on 14th November, blaming Diwali for the poor AQI. X user Befitting Facts spotted the Instagram stories.
Meet @Officialneha ,
— Facts (@BefittingFacts) November 14, 2023
She is sharing 6 days old post to show Diwali has caused pollution and she can't even breathe. Diwali was just 2 days plumber. 🤣🤣
Inko… pic.twitter.com/1owfFjkbW6
Neha Sharma, who has appeared in Hindi, Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam and Punjabi films, was among the first who shared the post. In her story, she wrote, “Happy Diwali and now we can’t even breathe…” She failed to comprehend that Diwali was not on 7th November but on 12th November, and the images were from 8th November and not 13th November. Without checking the facts, she went ahead and blamed the Hindu festival Diwali for the poor AQI.
Next in the line was Bollywood actor and son of famous Masala film director David Dhavan, Varun Dhavan, who chose not to caption the story. While he stayed on the safer side, he did participate in the campaign that appears to be a part of the anti-Diwali toolkit.
Following Neha and Varun’s footsteps, Bigg Boss fame Jiya Shankar shared the post by NDTV with the caption “Happy Diwali”. Though she did not write “we cannot breathe” like Neha, Jiya did blame the Hindu festival Diwali for the poor AQI in Delhi and Mumbai without checking the date of the post by NDTV.
Television actor Fahmaan Khan, who is best known for Imlie and Mere Dad Ki Dulhan, shared the story without a caption. Khan also acted in Balaji Telefilms’ erotic web series Gandi Baat in one episode.
Curiously, all the above actors shared the same old story, giving an impression that it could be the handiwork of a PR agency that aims to defame Diwali, a Hindu festival of lights, even though the AQI levels in Delhi were much worse a week before on account of stubble burning in Punjab.
While these actors and actresses participated in the campaign against Diwali and Hindus, it is notable that Diwali fireworks did not affect the AQI of Delhi to the level that stubble burning did in the last couple of weeks. Data shows that AQI on the morning following Diwali was almost half of the AQI four days before Diwali, that is, on 8th November, the day these photographs were taken by NDTV photojournalists.
Furthermore, for a couple of days, stubble-burning incidents came down close to 100, but on the day of Diwali and the day after, farmers of Punjab resumed stubble-burning. On 13th November, there were over 1,600 incidents of stubble burning recorded in Punjab.
