The tweeple almost rewrote history on Valentine’s Day. No, this is not about Egypt and Hosni Mubarak. It’s more to do with our freedom fighters – Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev.

Twitter was unusually abuzz with Bhagat Singh on Monday which soon became a top trending topic all day. Tweets saying “Bhagat Singh, Rajguru & Sukhdev were hanged on 14 Feb 1931’ started to appear when it is common knowledge that they were, in fact, hanged on March 23 1931. However, many people, including celebrities, fell for this and started retweeting this bit of “history”, ensuring that the cycle continued.
The issue seemed to be close to actor Madhavan’s heart (remember Rang De Basanti?) who retweeted: “Happy valentine’s day. bt 14/2/1931, Bhagat Sing, Rajguru nd Sukhdeb wr hanged. pls b an indian. nd spend atleast 1min fr them.”

The Samajwadi Party even went to the extent of putting the same on their official page on Facebook.

Things came to such a pass that some people tried to change the Wikipedia page. Wikipedia administrator Tinu Cherian said, “This is a planned and deliberate effort to create a rumour. I checked the Wikipedia page on Bhagat Singh and found that twice the date was changed to Feb 14. I finally had to lock the article and add references to reliable sources to prove the actual date. I wonder if it is a conspiracy to divert attention from Valentine’s Day.”

Santhosh, a techie, said, “This is a classic example to show how social media websites can be misused.”

Copyrights : Bangalore Mirror / Times of India Group : “Bhagat Singh gets new death anniversary on Twitter” by Seby Stanley appeared in Bangalore Mirror newspaper on 15 Feb 2011

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