The allegation surfaced after India began a marathon six-week general election on April 19, 2024, in the world’s largest democratic exercise.
Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his ruling Bharatiya Janata Party are widely expected to win the election, but opposition parties have condemned him for anti-Islamic comments in election campaign speeches that have raised concerns about sectarian tensions in India .
He called Muslims “infiltrators” in campaign rallies and claimed that the main opposition Congress party would redistribute the country’s wealth among Muslims if it won.
Similar posts sharing the same video on X here and here also accused the Gandhis of handing over the temple to Muslims.
But the video actually shows a now-defunct temple in Pakistan.
Ancient temple in Pakistan
A keyword search on Google followed by a YouTube search revealed that the original video was uploaded by a Pakistani vlogger on August 10, 2023, with the sticker text reading “Seeta Ram mandir becomes chicken shop in Pakistan” (archived link).
Below is a screenshot comparison of the video in the fake messages (left) and the original YouTube video (right):
The same YouTube user uploaded another video on August 25, 2023, in which a Hindi-speaking man tells viewers that he would take them on a tour of the now defunct Seeta Ram Temple in Ahmadpur Sial, a city in Central Province Punjab in Pakistan (archived link).
The temple at Ahmadpur Sial can be found here on Google Maps (archived link).
Photos of the temple uploaded to Google Maps by users match the building seen in the videos of the Seeta Ram Mandir (archived link).
Below is a screenshot comparison of the building in the video (left) and a photo of the temple on Google Maps (right), with similarities highlighted by AFP:
Pakistan-based human rights activist Kapil Dev also confirmed the location of the temple in Ahmadpur Sial town in the country.
“This temple is no longer functional,” he told AFP on May 9, 2024. Kapil explained that many similar temples in Punjab became defunct after Hindus fled Pakistan for India following the 1947 partition of the subcontinent.
AFP has debunked disinformation swirling around India’s elections here.
