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| - Fact Check: Image of Muslim youths studying Hindu holy books takes a communal turn
A picture of Islamic scholars reading Hindu scriptures has gone viral on social media with a misleading communal claim. India Today's AFWA finds the truth.
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India Today Fact Check
The picture was taken at a seminary in Hyderabad. Muslims were studying Hindu religious texts to understand the similarities between the two religions.
An image of a few Muslim youths sitting in a library with Hindu and Muslim religious books is going viral on social media with the claim that they are rewriting Hindu holy scriptures. The claim says this is how Vedas, Puranas and Upanishads are “adulterated”.
Extract from one such post on Facebook in Hindi translates to, “The work of adulteration of our religious texts is in full swing. After 20 years, our next generation will read these adulterated Vedas, Puranas and Upanishads.”
India Today Anti Fake News War Room (AFWA) has found the claim to be false. The image, from an Islamic seminary in Hyderabad, shows students studying Hindu religious scripts to understand the common attributes in both religions.
Many have replied to the post, asking the Centre to take immediate action and termed the act “book jihad”. The archived versions of some of the posts can be seen here, here and here.
The post has further compared the image to the work of British historian TB Macaulay and western academician Max Muller on Hindu religious texts. However, since it is a matter of academic interpretation and opinion, we are not looking into that.
AFWA probe
Using reverse image search, we found a report by “The Hindu” which has used the same picture. According to this report from April 2014, the image shows students at the library of an Islamic seminary in Hyderabad studying the Vedas to understand the common attributes in Islam and Hinduism.
The article further says that the library belongs to Al Mahadul Aali Al Islami seminary and it has more than 1,000 books on other religions. The caption of the image, clicked by “The Hindu” photojournalist G Ramakrishna reads, “Students at Al Mahadul Aali Al Islami studying the Vedas to understand the common attributes in Islam and Hinduism. This seminary has more than 1000 books on other religions at Hyderabad.”
When AFWA contacted the institute, its deputy director Oman Abedeen confirmed that the image was clicked at their library.
“Al Mahadul Aali Al Islami is an Islamic research institute. We have a department called ‘Studies of Indian Scripture’ that offers students an understanding of Hinduism. We teach them Hindu Vedas such as Bhagavad Gita and Upanishads. We also invite scholars from other faiths to take classes for our students so that they get the best understanding of every religion,” Abedeen said.
“Once a team from ‘The Hindu’ visited our institute and they were surprised to see our collection of books. That’s when the said image was clicked. At present, we have around 1,500 books from other religions, including Hinduism and Christianity,” Abedeen added.
Therefore, the claim that the viral image shows Muslim youths rewriting Hindu religious scriptures is false. The image from Al Mahadul Aali Al Islami seminary in Hyderabad shows students studying the Vedas to understand the similarities between Islam and Hinduism.
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