No, these are not photos of a rally in India's Ayodhya on November 25, 2018
- This article is more than one year old.
- Published on November 30, 2018 at 17:00
- 2 min read
- By AFP India
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The photographs are being widely shared on Facebook, for example here and here.
The caption says: The streets of Ayodhya were filled with #Sadhus, #Sants & #Hindu #karyakartas who had poured in from various parts of the county for a #VHP grand '#Dharam #Sabha' on Sunday to push for construction of a #Ram#temple. #Bajarangdal.
The caption is claiming that the images show a protest in Ayodhya in Northern Uttar Pradesh on 25 November, 2018, demanding that a Hindu temple be built at a flashpoint Indian holy site.
Hindu hardliners did assemble in Ayodhya for the protest, but a reverse image search found the photos being widely shared on social media do not show the November 25, 2018 event.
The first image in the Facebook post was posted on the website of Maharashtra Kranti Morcha, a group that helped organise the protests, on 15 October, 2016.
The photograph shows a huge crowd of farmers and locals waving saffron flags during a protest over the rape of a young girl and government quotas in jobs and education in Maharashtra’s Kolhapur region.
The second image featured in the misleading Facebook post was published on the local Indian Express newspaper website on 24 May, 2017 and shows another protest in Maharashtra.
The third image in the misleading Facebook post was published on a local Hindi-language news website, News18, as part of their coverage of a rally over government quotas in Rajasthan on March 2017.
It was also widely shared on social media at the time, for example here on Twitter.
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