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| - Fact Check: Man objecting to 'Bhoomi Puja' is DMK MP from Tamil Nadu - video NOT from Cong-ruled Karnataka
India Today, in its investigation, found that the video was from Tamil Nadu's Dharmapuri, and about a year old.
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India Today Fact Check
This is a 2022 video from Tamil Nadu. The man opposing the Hindu ceremony is S Senthilkumar, a DMK MP from Dharmapuri.
A video of a man objecting to "Bhoomi Pujan" (a traditional Hindu foundation-laying ceremony) involving just a Hindu priest is being shared on social media. Allegedly, this video is from Karnataka under the new Congress regime.
One tweet containing the video claimed in Hindi: “This leader is angry because the PWD officer called only a Pandit for Bhoomi Pujan, not a pastor or Maulavi. This is Karnataka under Congress rule.” An archived version of this tweet can be seen here.
India Today, in its investigation, found that the video was from Tamil Nadu. The man seen objecting to the ceremony is S Senthilkumar, a Lok Sabha MP from the state's ruling party, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam.
What can we see in the video?
At the beginning of the video, we saw a man arriving with a group of people at the banks of a lake where arrangements were made for a religious ceremony according to Hindu customs. A Hindu priest was also present there. A few seconds into the video, the man could be seen questioning a government official present there, asking in Tamil whether they were aware that a government event should not involve prayers from only one particular religion.
He asked where representatives of other religions were. He also asked the Hindu priest to leave, stating that the government in the state followed the Dravidian model, which is inclusive of all religions.
Where is the video from?
Because the language being spoken in the video was Tamil, we ran a keyword search and found the same video and screenshots from it used in multiple news reports from July 2022. According to a report by The New Indian Express, the man seen lashing out at the government officer was Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam MP S Senthilkumar from Dharmapuri, Tamil Nadu. Incidentally, the video was reportedly from the same Assembly constituency. Per The News Minute, the MP was invited to the “Bhoomi Pujan” ceremony for a lake rejuvenation project.
A statement from the MP to The New Indian Express explained that when the Dharmapuri administration invited him to lay the foundation stone, he specifically mentioned that he would not participate if there was a “Bhoomi Pooja”. However, his instructions were not followed, leading to his outburst.
Senthilkumar said, “I also specifically said that I will not participate if there is any saffron or turmeric painted on the brick. But the instructions were not followed. DMK practices the Dravidian model and in this, everyone must be included, favouring one ceremony belonging to a particular religion is unfair.”
According to reports, the MP later inaugurated the project, and no prayers were held as initially scheduled. The video, now in circulation, was also tweeted by Senthilkumar on July 16, 2022.
It is, hence, clear that the video in question is about a year old and from Tamil Nadu, not Karnataka. Following the victory of the Congress party in the Karnataka Assembly polls, social media posts with false communal claims have gone viral, and India Today has fact-checked several of them.
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