The digital copy of a book titled "Magnificent Bharat" is being shared on social media with the claim that it was distributed as a booklet to the delegates at the recently held G20 summit in New Delhi.
BOOM found these claims to be false; our fact-check reveals that the viral book "Magnificent Bharat" was published in August, 2021, and has no link to the recently held G20 summit. Furthermore, we also went through the list of published documents on the official website of the G20 summit, and could not find any mention of this book.
Reports about G20 dignitaries receiving invitations for the summit from the 'President of Bharat' as opposed to 'President of India' led to speculations about the central government's plans to propose officially changing India's name to Bharat. There were also reports of booklets being distributed to delegates, with the word "Bharat" replacing India. The message with the PDF is being shared in this context.
The book being shared portrayed a Hindu-centric history of India, while undermining India's Islamic history, and also contained multiple comparisons of Indian architecture with that of other countries, alluding to the former's superiority. It also highlighted the prevalence of Vedic culture around the world.
BOOM received a 55-page PDF version of the book on WhatsApp, with the caption, "👆🏻Booklet shared with G20 delegates."
We also found a video version of the book on YouTube, being shared with a titled that claimed that it is booklet being distributed to the dignitaries at the G20 summit.
Click here to view an archived version of the video.
Fact-Check
BOOM performed a keyword search with "booklet g20", and came across multiple articles about the word "Bharat" being used in a booklet that was gifted to the delegates at the G20 summit.
Business Standard reported that two booklets, titled "Bharat, The Mother of Democracy" and "Elections in India", were to be given to the delegates.
We also went through the entire list of documents uploaded on the official website of the summit, and were able to view the booklet titles reported by Business Standard, but could not find any document titled "Magnificent Bharat".
List of miscellaneous documents uploaded on the official website of the G20 summit in Delhi.
We viewed the booklet tilted "Bharat, The Mother of Democracy" and found there to be thematic similarities with the viral PDF book titled "Magnificent Bharat" - both the booklets took a Hindu-centric view of India's past. The booklet given to the delegates also largely ignored India's Islamic past, with a page on Mughal emperor Akbar being the only page touching upon that topic.
However, in terms of visuals or text, the official booklet distributed at the summit had no similarities to the viral PDF document.
We then searched for Magnificent Bharat on Google, to find that a book with that exact same title already exists, authored by Krishna Neha Agarrwaal, and was published on August 8, 2021, on Kindle.
We compared a sample from the Kindle version with the viral PDF fine, and found it to be a very close match - with similar visuals in both the documents.
Through keyword searches, we were able to view a PDF version of the same book by Agarrwaal uploaded on Scribd, and found to be an exact match with viral PDF.
The book was published over two years before the summit, and we were unable to find any information that would link it to booklets given to the delegates.