By Shrey Banerjee
A scripted video showing two men representing Hindu and Muslim communities engaging in a roadside argument with each other is circulating on social media as a real incident.
BOOM found that the video is scripted and shot by a YouTube channel as part of a social experiment to show religious unity. A part of this video has been cropped out and shared with a misleading caption.
The video shows a man donning a saffron scarf being shoved and heckled by a person wearing a skullcap. A heated exchange of words between them follows and a crowd starts gathering around them.
This video is circulating with the caption, "They can roam freely in your areas wearing skullcaps but you cannot go in their areas wearing a saffron scarf. This is defined as secularism." (Original caption in Hindi: वह तुम्हारे एरिया में टोपी लगा कर रह सकते हैं घूम सकते हैं तुम कुछ नहीं करोगे लेकिन तुम भगवा गमछा डाल कर उनके एरिया में जाओगे तो तुम्हे धक्का देना शुरू कर देंगे । इसे ही सेकुलर कहा जाता है.
The tweet can be seen here.
The archive of the video can be viewed here.
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Fact Check
BOOM watched the video closely and observed that at the end the man wearing the saffron scarf tells the crowd gathered there to wave at the camera. This suggested that the video may have been scripted.
We also spotted a logo spelling out “PM 2 Vlogs” in the video and performed a keyword search to look for related content and channels.
We found a YouTube channel named PM 2 Vlogs and found that they conduct various social experiments and produce scripted videos for their channel. After observing some of their content and the cover picture of the channel, we found that it primarily focused on content related to Hindu-Muslim harmony. The description of the channel reads," Hello Guys, I help homeless people and also do social experiments."
We then found the full version of the viral video from where the viral clip has been cropped out. The link of the entire video can be seen here.
The exact scene present in the social media post began at 12 minutes 25 seconds.
At the beginning of the video itself, it was mentioned by the man wearing the saffron scarf, who identifies himself as Parvez, that this is a social experiment being conducted by him and another person whom he introduced as Azeem.
The video was captioned as, ”हिंदू भाई को मुस्लिम भाई ने भगाया फिर (Hindu Brother Made Muslim Brother Run and Then..) |Social Experiment | Hindu Muslim | Hindu | Muslim | Media”.
In the video, both the men, wearing the skullcap and the saffron scarf were acting; they later revealed the same to the crowd present, towards the end of the video. They added that their videos are aimed to show the love Hindus and Muslims have for each other and that the differences between members of both religions should end.
We also found that this channel is operated by Parvez Mirza who is the one donning the saffron scarf and can also be recognized from the profile picture of the YouTube channel, where he is holding a YouTube subscriber milestone award. We also found another one of his channels named Top Bakra, owned by Mirza, the link of which can be seen here.
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