PewDiePie under fire for India-Pakistan comments amid YouTube supremacy race with T-Series

YouTube king Felix Kjellberg, aka PewDiePie, faced strong criticism for his comments on the heightened tension between Pakistan and India in March 12 issue of Pew News. The heavy backlash forced the content creator to pull the segment from the clip.

“Basically what happened was that after the Pulwama terror attack, T-Series removed Pakistani singers’ songs. India blamed Pakistans for the attack, but Pakistan condemned the attack and denied any connection to it… But the most important thing out of all of this is that the Pakistanis are on our side. Pakistan is on our side, T-Series. You’ll regret making this enemy,"  PewDiePie had said.

The now deleted clip showed a small group of Pakistani musicians rallying in the streets with signs saying “Unsubscribe T-Series.”

The barrage of criticism prompted PewDiePie to clarify his stance. “I think it's clear that I didn't mean anything in a bigger sense of what goes on between India and Pakistan. I was strictly speaking in the context of T-Series and artists getting scre***d over, just want to make that clear here," he said.

The criticism of PewDiePie, however, did not stop, many users noting that jokes about the conflict between India and Pakistan were completely unwarranted and in a very bad taste.

"Are u retarded? Two countries on brink of war and you try to take sides by critising T series for banning artists. Those artists support pakistan go chk their twitter. Are we supposed to pay them for music? You lost 1 subscriber cause this was no joke," said a netizen.

I hate that people are purposely taking that kind of content out of context.. You really have to be an idiot or really lack attention in life if you don't (or don't want to) understand the context of the whole India/Pakistan thingy in your vid. I'm out — Mateusz Macocha (@matmacocha) March 12, 2019

Plzz pewds i know u don't mean any harm but plzz keep ur mouth shut in situations you don't really know! U dont know the india- pakistan history. You will only make a whole nation stand against you if you keep making fun of these sensitive situations. — Rjs (@RajeshwarKing) March 13, 2019

@TeamYouTube A YOUTUBER name pewdiepie is promoting terrorism between india and pakistan . pls delete his video or take any serious action https://t.co/LiKyCgH64v — Tushar (@tush27072001) March 13, 2019

On Saturday, Indian music record label T-Series managed to race ahead of PewDiePie for about five minutes to become No.1 YouTube channel. This was the second instance of T-Series overtaking PewDiePie as the former had defeated PewDiePie for about eight minutes on February 22. T-Series failed to maintain its lead for long as PewDiePie fans across the world rallied to put him on top again.

Last week, T-Series Chairman and Managing Director Gulshan Kumar posted a video on Twitter, urging all Indians to subscribe to his channel. "There is an Indian YouTube channel on the brink of becoming World`s No.1. It has taken us a lot of effort to come this far. To take my father Mr. Gulshan Kumar`s dream forward, I started this channel. Today, it belongs to you, to the entire nation. It`s a historic moment for all of us. So let`s come together and subscribe to T-Series YouTube channel and make India proud," he said in the video message.

The subscriber gap between the two was just 1,745 at the time of filling the story.