Posts share doctored videos to falsely claim they show Indian PM 'watching Hindu religious sermon'
- This article is more than one year old.
- Published on July 4, 2023 at 05:05
- 5 min read
- By Devesh MISHRA, AFP India
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"Prime Minister Modi watched a video of the head of Bageshwar Dham Dhirendra Krishna Shastri's religious Ram Katha lecture," reads the Hindi-language caption of the posts shared separately here and here on Facebook on June 4 and 5, 2023.
The two videos, viewed over 3.9 million times on social media, show Modi intently watching a person speaking on a large TV screen.
One of the videos appears to show Modi looking at the screen alone and in the second clip, he can be seen sitting with a group of people all looking towards the screen.
Hindutva is a term used by Hindus to refer to the ideology of their own religion.
Dhirendra Krishna Shastri is a Hindu nationalist Hindutva preacher and the head priest of Bageshwar Dham Temple located in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh (archived link).
Under Modi's pro-Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the country's 200 million Muslim minority population has been increasingly targeted in recent years.
The parent organisation of Modi's BJP -- Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh -- is a right-wing Hindu nationalist organisation that advocates the supremacy of Hindus in India (archive link).
The first misleading clip was also posted to Facebook and Twitter here and here along with the false claim, while the second clip was posted on Facebook here, here and here.
In fact, the videos were altered to insert videos of Shastri's speech.
Rocket launch
A combination of a Google reverse image search and keyword searches reveals the original clip of the first video was uploaded on the official Twitter account of Asian News International (ANI) on July 22, 2019 (archived link).
The tweet's caption reads: "#WATCH Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi watched the live telecast of #Chandrayaan2 launch by ISRO, at 2:43 pm today."
ANI's tweet came after the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) launched the country's second moon mission -- Chandrayaan-2 -- from Sriharikota in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh on July 22, 2019, according to the Indian Space Science Data Center (archived link).
Parts of the ANI's clip were reused several times -- including at the beginning when Modi was seen putting his hand on his chin -- to make the misleading video longer.
Below is a screenshot comparison of the video in the false post (left) and the video in ANI's Twitter post (right):
The Press Information Bureau of India (PIB) also refuted the false claim in a tweet on June 5, 2023 (archived link).
"A fake video of Prime Minister @narendramodi is being shared on social media. The video being shared is altered," the tweet read. "The correct video is from July 22, 2019, in which the Prime Minister is watching the live telecast of the Chandrayaan-2 launch."
The clip of Dhirendra Krishna Shastri that appeared in the misleading video was uploaded to the verified account of local broadcaster Sanskar TV on January 7, 2023 (archive link).
The same visuals and speech of Shastri, seen in the doctored video, can also be seen from the 1:57:00 timestamp (archived link).
Train accident briefing
The original clip of the second misleading video was uploaded on June 3, 2023 to the official YouTube channel of the Indian Prime Minister's Office (archived link).
The video was uploaded after the deadly train crash in Odisha state on June 2, which killed at least 288 people (archived link).
"PM Modi chaired a high-level meeting to take stock of the situation in the wake of the train accident in Odisha," the video's English-language caption reads. "PM Modi is also heading to Odisha to review the situation."
Modi can be seen receiving a briefing in the aftermath of the accident.
Below is the screenshot comparison of the false video (left) and the original video (right).
A person can be heard in the background saying in Hindi that Prime Minister Modi was being told details on the accident in a high-level meeting
Media reports here and here have also published the original video with captions saying they show Modi at a meeting in the aftermath of the train crash (archive link here, here).
The clip of Shastri's speech used in the second misleading video was uploaded to his official YouTube channel on August 6, 2022.
The video of Shastri's speech used in the misleading video was uploaded here to his official channel on August 6, 2022 (archived link).
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