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| - Fact Check: 15-year-old video of Mayawati on 'Fundamentalist' Muslims shared out of context ahead of UP polls
A video of Mayawti has gone viral on social media, claiming that the Bahujan Samaj Party supremo has asked people to vote for the Bharatiya Janata Party rather than "radical" Muslim groups.
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India Today Fact Check
This clip has been edited and presented out of context from a longer press statement given by Mayawati in November 2006. The BSP leader was talking about the 2006 municipal elections in Meerut.
Days ahead of the first phase of the Uttar Pradesh assembly polls, a video featuring Mayawati has been making the rounds on social media. The video was shared with the claim that the Bahujan Samaj Party supremo has asked people to vote for the Bharatiya Janata Party, instead of “radical” Muslim groups. The video was circulated with hashtags including #UPElections2022.
In this 30-second video, Mayawati can be heard saying, “The Muslim community prefers fanatics. To stop the fundamentalist Muslim’s wife from winning the elections, I asked them to transfer their votes to the BJP. In Meerut, scheduled caste people the Muslims didn’t; their votes went to the fundamentalists but upon my insistence, the scheduled caste, the backward caste, and the upper caste voters associated with us, they transferred their votes to the BJP. So that the fundamentalists don’t win the elections.”
The archived version of the post can be seen here.
India Today Anti Fake News War Room (AFWA) has found that the video in question is more than a decade old. Mayawati was speaking in the context of the 2006 Meerut municipal corporation elections.
AFWA probe
With the help of a keyword search, we found the longer version of the same video in an ABP news report. According to this television news report shared by an unrelated YouTube account, the video was ten years old when it became viral again. The video’s title claims the comments were made by Mayawati on November 10, 2006.
In this longer version of the video, Mayawati can be heard saying, “You know that previously, the mayor of Meerut was for our party. So, why didn’t we win this time? That’s because that seat turned into a Hindu-Muslim tussle. And you know that people of the Muslim community prefer fanatics. The candidate of our party was also Muslim. But the one who left our party, the sitting MLA, made his wife contest the elections. You are well aware of his radical statements that led to Muslims joining him. His wife could have won the election. The candidate of our party was not a fundamentalist. To stop the fundamentalist Muslim’s wife from winning the elections, I asked them [voters] to transfer their votes to the BJP.”
A few months ahead of the 2007 assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh, local body elections were held in the state between October and November 2006. While all major parties participated in the elections, the BSP stayed away. Reportedly, however, despite staying away from the municipal elections, the presence of the BSP was felt everywhere. A December 2006 Economic & Political Weekly report noted that the polls were “BSP-centric since BSP controlled the agenda.”
Instead of participating in the civic polls, the BSP had asked its vote-bank to vote for the party best placed to defeat the Samajwadi Party in the election, be it the Congress or the BJP.
We also found that in November 2006, multiple media outlets reported on the aforementioned press meeting held by Mayawati.
According to a November 2006 report in the Hindustan Times, on November 10, 2006, Mayawati had held a press meet where she talked about the BSP’s tactical support to the BJP and the Congress in the local body elections that had recently concluded. During this meeting, she spoke about how the BSP foiled the plans of “fundamentalist’” Haji Yaqoob Qureshi in Meerut.
She said, in Meerut, the contest was between the BJP candidate Madhu and UDF candidate Sanjida, wife of then-Minister of State for Minority Welfare Haji Yaqub Qureshi, who was previously a part of the BSP. Mayawati claimed that “Haji had deserted the BSP and was following a fundamentalist agenda.”
Following these remarks made to the press, supporters of Qureshi burnt Mayawati's effigies and staged protests across Uttar Pradesh. Responding to the backlash, Mayawati addressed the press again and claimed reports had failed to understand her words. “Some channels have shown that I have called the Muslims fundamentalists. Such a twist to my statement is wrong,” she had said at the time.
Per the Hindustan Times, Mayawati said at the time: “Along with Islam, all religions have highlighted the spirit of brotherhood and harmony. No religion permits people to sow the seed of discord in society. Everyone knows that Haji Yaqub Qureshi had always tried to cash in on hate. Even Muslim scholars have opposed the misdemeanour of the Haji. It was to ensure the defeat of the fundamentalist ideology that I got the vote of my party transferred to the party that was in a position to defeat Haji’s wife.”
She added, “Muslims are part of the Bahujan Samaj and I have never called Muslims fundamentalists.”
It is thus clear that the video in question has been edited from a longer video of a press meet held by Mayawati almost 15 years ago in the context of the 2006 municipal elections in Uttar Pradesh.
(With inputs from Yash Mittal in New Delhi)
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