Two little bottles of COVID-19 vaccines — Covaxin and Covishield — dance in an animated video, to the old Boney M. song 'Rasputin'. The video, released by Kerala Health Minister KK Shailaja to promote vaccination, is also in solidarity with the two medical college students who had been attacked on social media for their dance video recently. "Get vaccinated from nearest vaccination centre. Crush the Curve," says a message at the end of the short ad by Kerala's Health Department. Crush the Curve is a massive vaccination awareness campaign launched by the Health Department, after the state has been witnessing another spike in COVID-19 cases in recent weeks.
The Kerala Co-operative Milk Marketing Federation or Milma, apex body of the dairy cooperatives of the state, also released an ad in support of the medicos Naveen and Janaki, whose 30-second dance video of 'Rasputin' had gone viral recently. However, after Naveen's last name was revealed in an interview, and it came about that he was Muslim, a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) sympathiser wrote a communal post about the duo's dance. The BJP supporter, an advocate called Krishna Raj, advised Janaki's parents to be careful so they would not need to be sorry like Nimisha's mother, in a reference to Nimisha a.k.a. Fathima, who had converted to Islam some years ago and left Kerala to join the terrorist organisation Islamic State (IS) in Afghanistan.
Soon, voices of solidarity rose for Janaki and Naveen and other medical students also put out videos of dancing to the same song bit. Students of other colleges also did the Rasputin dance and posted on social media. In one of these videos, a young woman, dressed in the traditional classical dance costumes, breaks into the Rasputin dance.
Watch: Janaki and Naveen's dance
Message is loud and clear.
— Ageing Gandalf (@nikhiljokes) April 9, 2021
Comrade Fasal and Comrade Sreelakshmi from Nirmala College campus.
Courtesy : Nirmala College SFI Unit.#AgainstCommunalism#AgainstHate#CountryTogether pic.twitter.com/hmXUDfQYQo
#StepWithRasputin dance by CUSAT SFI.
— Advaid അദ്വൈത് (@Advaidism) April 10, 2021
In protest against Communalism spewed by the Right Wing against the dance of two medical students.
Kerala fighting Sanghis and communalism like it always does — in style. pic.twitter.com/M5gf3IigU2