It began as a reaction to BBC coverage in the region.
The hashtag #BritishOccupiedIreland began trending in India over the weekend, after director Shekhar Kapur tweeted a question at BBC News.
Kapur queried why the news broadcaster referred to Kashmir as “Indian occupied”, but didn’t apply to same description to Northern Ireland as being “British occupied”.
Hey @BBCWorld .. each time you call #kashmir ‘Indian Occupied Kashmir’ I keep wondering why you refuse to call Northern Ireland ‘British Occupied Ireland’ ?
— Shekhar Kapur (@shekharkapur) August 11, 2019
Kapur has close to three million followers on the social media platform, and within a few hours, the tweet had close to 100,000 likes.
This then spurned on a series of other tweets to take up the #BritishOccupedIreland hashtag and continue asking the question towards the national British broadcaster:
As England is trending #BoycottArsenal , India we see public support for Northern Ireland liberation building up as we #BritishOccupiedIreland Trends on twitter pic.twitter.com/4zZ8AFeurd
— Pappu “TheRealPappu” (@0ff1ceofRG) August 11, 2019
Lets retweet till it reaches the whole world before 15 Aug 2019. #BritishOccupiedIreland pic.twitter.com/JiKKrExxBT
— Prakash Shetty (@kitneka) August 11, 2019
#britishoccupiedireland waiting for the @BBCWorld to show the reality of British Occupied Ireland. pic.twitter.com/JiLIzGavdY
— Ashu? (@Ashut0shJha) August 12, 2019
#BBCNews #britishoccupiedireland
When will the BRITISH occupied IRELAND gets free….???? pic.twitter.com/47yn98EsyE— Mr.Kumar. (@_6_kumar_6_) August 11, 2019
Do You Know Anything About Kashmir…… With out Any information You are Showing Waste Videos…….. @BBC U Lost Hope From INDIA ???? You Can't Get it Back…….#britishoccupiedireland pic.twitter.com/QzrP6srXHr
— Veera Shiva (@VeeraShiva11) August 11, 2019
Some of the tweet’s have since been retweeted by Baijayant Panda, the vice president of India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, who accompanied the tweets with a statement of his own:
“Exactly! Fact is BBCWorld, J&K [Jammu and Kasmir] acceded to India in the same environment & under the exact same rules that YOUR country applied to ALL the princely states. It never was a bilateral or international issue. So please stop the hypocrisy, & stop stoking trouble where there isn’t any.”