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| - Fact Check: No caste discrimination, this video was staged to raise Covid-19 awareness
A scripted video created to fight misinformation during the Covid-19 pandemic was wrongly shared as an instance of caste-based untouchability.
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India Today Fact Check
This is a scripted video from June 2020 made by civic workers in Bengaluru during the Covid-19 pandemic to create awareness.
A video of alleged caste-based discrimination has been making the rounds on social media. The video shows a woman covering her face and gesturing to a few other women, likely sanitation workers, outside her gate to stay away. She then stepped out and placed a bottle of water in the middle of the road, presumably for the other women to drink from.
Sharing this clip, one person wrote on Twitter: "Reality of Hinduism. The Brahmin woman did not allow Dalit women to stand near her house and she also practiced untouchability. This is why Ambedkar burnt the Hindu book Manusmriti and left this cult along with more than 10 lakh people.” Some of these posts are archived here and here.
India Today found that the video did not show a real incident. It was staged by Bengaluru civic workers to raise awareness.
Our Probe
Reverse-searching keyframes from the viral video led us to the same clip shared on June 22, 2020, making it evident that it was not a recent incident. This tweet also alleged caste-based discrimination and mentioned that these sanitation workers were employed by the Bengaluru Municipal Corporation.
Since all the women featured in the video could be seen wearing masks, it is reasonable to speculate that the video was related to the Covid-19 pandemic. Following a subsequent search using relevant keywords, we came across a news report by Asianet Newsable which said that the video had been created solely to raise awareness.
We also found the clip uploaded to the YouTube channel of Asianet Newsable on June 24, 2022. The video’s description noted that a few BBMP pourakarmikas or civic workers created this video. One of the pourakarmika women played the role of an arrogant house owner and refused to provide drinking water inside her home.
According to Asianet, the video went viral, with many, including officials, getting furious believing it to be true. The following day, they made another video to clarify that this was not a real incident and that they had made it as an awareness video, adding that all persons in the video were pourakarmikas from the Singasandra ward in Bengaluru. These reports quoted also Sarfaraz Khan, the Special Commissioner of Bengaluru Municipal Corporation, who lauded the effort of the workers and said this video would “bring some change in few who misbehave with pourakarmikas.”
Thus, it is clear that a staged video went viral as an incident of caste-based discrimination.
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