By Hazel Gandhi
A video of a large religious procession in Greater Noida is being shared with a misleading claim that it shows a pilgrimage from Nepal's Janakpur to Ayodhya ahead of the inauguration ceremony of Ram Mandir slated for later this month.
BOOM found that the claims are misleading; while there is a pilgrimage organised from Nepal to Ayodhya, this particular video is old and shows a 3-km Kalash Yatra held in Greater Noida ahead of self-styled godman Dhirendra Shastri's sermon.
The Ram temple in Ayodhya is set to be inaugurated on January 22, 2024, amid much anticipation and its own share of controversies. Aside from Prime Minister Narendra Modi, BJP veterans LK Advani and Murli Manohar, along with celebrities like Alia Bhatt, Ranbir Kapoor, Dhanush, and Randeep Hooda have also been invited to the inauguration. Congress, on the other hand, has declined to attend while calling the occasion a "RSS-BJP event". Four prominent religious heads or Shakaracharyas from Uttarakhand, Gujarat, Odisha, and Karnataka have also refused to attend, citing the incomplete construction of the temple and how it is against shastras religious scriptures.
The video of the procession showing people dressed in yellow and orange clothes is being shared with the caption, "Wedding gift for Bhagwan Ram and Maa Sita is being carried out in a grand procession from Maa Sita's home in Nepal to Bhagwan Ram's Mandir in Ayodhya"
Click here to view the post and here for an archive.
The video is being shared with a similar claim on Facebook.
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FACT CHECK
BOOM found that while there is a pilgrimage being organised from Janakpur, Sita's birthplace in Nepal, to Ayodhya, this video is old and unrelated to that procession.
We ran a reverse image search of some key frames from the viral video on Google and found this report by ETV Bharat published on July 9, 2023. The report carried visuals similar to the viral video and detailed how a Kalash Yatra was organised in Greater Noida on July 9 ahead of Dhirendra Shastri's sermons that were supposed to be held from July 10-16.
The pilgrimage covered an area of about 3 kilometers and was attended in large numbers especially by women who carried an earthern pot, also known as a Kalash, on their heads.
BOOM has previously written about self-styled Hindu godman Dhirendra Shastri, also known as Bageshwar Dham, and how his powers were misrepresented on news channel ABP.
BOOM also found that the viral video was shared on Bageshwar Dham Sarkar's verified YouTube channel on July 9, 2023, with the title 'Jaitpur-Greater Noida Shobha Yatra And Kalash Yatra'
(Original text in Hindi: "जैतपुर ग्रेटर नोएडा शोभा यात्रा एवं कलश यात्रा")
A portion of this video from 0:58 onwards matches the viral video.
Below is a comparison between the viral video and the original video shared by Bageshwar Dham's YouTube channel in July 2023.
We then reached out to Umesh Shrestha, fact-checker and editor at Nepal Fact Check, who informed us that a pilgrimage was being organised from Nepal's Janaki temple in Janakpur ahead of the temple's inauguration in Ayodhya. According to the BBC, the pilgrimage carrying 251 loads of gifts, also known as koselis, along with other presents in the form of clothes, food, and jewellery from devotees will reach Ayodhya on January 20. Shrestha also shared some videos and photos of the pilgrimage which can be seen here and here.
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