Ishaan Khatter and Ananya Panday launched the dance number Beyonce sharma jaayegi from their upcoming film Khaali Peeli on Monday, and netizens started trolling the song within minutes of its launch, over what they felt were racist lyrics. The song currently also has more dislikes than likes on its official YouTube link.
The words in the song that social media finds objectionable go:
"Bhadkeeli nakhreeli
Chamkeeli lachkeeli
Tu jo kamar yeh hilayegi
Tujhe dekh ke goriya
Beyonce sharma jayegi"
The word "goriya" refers to a fair woman. Pop superstar Beyonce, of African American origin, is dark-skinned. Beyonce's name trended on Twitter all through Monday as many of her Indian fans claimed the line in the song is a racist dig at Beyonce.
"#BeyonceSharmaJaayegi Bollywood hitting new levels of low after hitting rock bottom. Using obnoxious lyrics, skin color and comparing her with #Beyonce . Utter disappointment again," tweeted a user.
"Dear Beyonce, We are sorry for this," apologised a fan of the singer.
Urging Beyonce to sue the makers of the Hindi song, another user tweeted: "Beyoncé please sue these m***s, I am begging you."
"Please look at the lyrics carefully, 'Tujhe dekh ke goriya, beyoncé sharma jaayegi', we all know that Beyonce is black whereas Ananya Pandey (a POC) is fair skinned and drawing comparisons between the two, the song suggests that Beyoncé is inferior (Beyonce sharma jaayegi) to Ananya just because she's not 'gori' (fair skinned) like the song suggests, implying that she has got to be ashamed because apparently bollywood believes that only one shade is beautiful! Now tell me how is that not racist and a perpetrator of the ideology that if you're not fair, then you cannot be considered beautiful!" reads a thread posted by a Twitter user.
The song 'Beyonce Sharma Jaayegi' has received a similar fate as the trailer of recently film "Sadak 2", which made headlines for getting more dislikes than likes on YouTube.
At the time of publishing this story, the song had 18,000 likes against 40,000 dislikes on the official YouTube page of Zee Music Company, which own music rights of the film.
The song has been written by Kumaar and Raj Shekhar, and composed by Vishal and Shekhar. Nakash Aziz and Neeti Mohan have sung the dance number featuring Ananya and Ishaan.
Directed by Maqbool Khan, romantic action drama "Khaali Peeli" is slated for a digital release on October 2.