By Srijit Das
A viral video of Mamata Banerjee where it appears the West Bengal chief minister said Hindu epic Mahabharat was written by Bengali poet and freedom fighter Kazi Nazrul Islam, is cropped and misleading.
BOOM found that the video has been cropped out of context to make it appear like Banerjee made an embarrassing faux pas.
In the widely circulated video, the chief minister can be heard saying, "Mahabharat... Kazi Najrul Islam wrote". The video went viral after Banerjee falsely mentioned that former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi went to the moon and mixed up Indian astronaut Rakesh Sharma with Bollywood actor Rakesh Roshan in her speeches recently.
BOOM found that the CM's speech was cropped out-of-context. The Trinamool Congress supremo, in her original speech, urged the audience to read Mahabharat and later quoted lines from a poem penned by Kazi Nazrul Islam.
Several right-wing X (formerly Twitter) handles such as Megh Updates, Political Kida, BefittingFacts posted the clipped version of Banerjee's speech to make the false claim.
Click here to view the post.
News outlets such as Times Now, Republic, India Today NE, Zee News, Free Press Journal, ETV Bharat also reported the same about the Trinamool Congress chief.
On the other hand, right-wing outlets OpIndia and Panchjanya referred to the clipped video to claim that the CM intentionally distorted facts related to Hinduism.
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Fact Check
BOOM found that the viral video is misleading and was taken from a speech given by Mamata Banerjee in Kolkata, West Bengal on August 28, 2023.
The video was live streamed on AITC Official, the YouTube channel of Trinamool Congress, on the same day.
From 2:51:42 time mark in the video, Mamata Banerjee says in Bengali, "So, I will tell you all to read and learn about Rabindranath, read and learn about Vivekananda, read and learn about Nazrul, read and learn about Birsa Munda, read and learn about Raghunath Murmu, read and learn about Matua Thakur, read and learn about Rajbangshi's Panchanan Burma.... (do it) well.... Mahabharat...".
After a brief pause, Banerjee quotes a Bengali poem by Islam saying, "Nazrul Islam wrote, 'Quran, Puran, Ved, Vedanta, Bible, Tripitaka, Granth Saheb, Zend-Avesta ... read as much as you want'".
The chief minister also recited other poems by Kazi Nazrul Islam and Rabindranath Tagore in the later part of her speech attacking the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government at the centre.
The poem Banerjee quoted after saying "Nazrul Islam wrote.." is titled as Samyabadi and can be found on the page 250 of an official document of West Bengal government's Information Technology (IT) department website.
Kazi NaZrul Islam was born in West Bengal's Paschim Bardhaman district in 1899. The Bengali rebel poet, who devoted his entire life to awakening the masses to fight for India's independence, penned several poems about human rights and communal unity. Islam is also recognised as the national poet of Bangladesh for his contributions.
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