2015 Video From Mongolia Viral As Surya Namaskar Performance In Olympics

A 2015 video showing participants performing Surya Namaskar (sun salutation), a sequence of 12 yoga poses, in Mongolia is viral with false claims that it shows a glimpse from Tokyo Olympics 2020.

The Tokyo Olympics 2020 kickstarted on July 23, with 120 Indian athletes (67 Men, 53 Women) participating in the tournament. Weightlifter Mirabai Chanu won a historic silver medal in the women's weightlifting (49kg category) on July 24 and ended India's 21-year wait for an Olympic medal in the discipline.

The video shows visuals of yoga participants dressed in the Indian tri-colour, performing Surya Namaskar.

The clip has been captioned as, "Surya namaskar being performed at the opening ceremony of Olympics in Tokyo Japan with our National flag Dress Code... Video: 3.14 min Take pride in spreading our culture throughout the world."

Click here to see one such post on Facebook.

The video was also sent to BOOM's tipline number with a similar caption for verification.

The video was posted on Twitter with the same caption as well.

Click here and here to see archive version of the tweets.

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Fact Check

We broke the video in its keyframes and conducted a reverse image search on some of the frames ; we were directed to a longer version of the video uploaded on PM Modi's official YouTube channel on May 17, 2015.

The description with the video states, "The Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi at the Community Reception and Yoga Event, organised by "Art of Living", in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia on May 17, 2015."

Here is a screen-to-screen comparison between the viral video and the video which was streamed live on PM Modi's official YouTube channel on May 17, 2015.

Taking cue from this, we did a keyword search and found tweets from Ministry of External Affairs along with The Art Of Living foundation about the event. According to news outlets, Narendra Modi addressed a community reception and yoga event at the Buyant Ukhaa Stadium, organised by the Art of Living foundation of spiritual guru Ravi Shankar.

The Art of Living is a non-profit organisation founded by Sri Sri Ravi Shankar in 1981, which is operating in 156 countries.

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