Video Of Man Criticising Hindus in Ayodhya for BJP’s Defeat Is Not Muslim

A video purporting to show a Muslim man criticising the Hindus of Ayodhya for not electing the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to power in their constituency of Faizabad is viral online.

BOOM found that the claims are false, the video does not show a Muslim man, but a pro-BJP Hindu content creator from Agra, Dhirendra Raghav.

The results of the Lok Sabha elections were announced on June 4, 2024, and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidate from Faizabad, Lallu Singh, lost to Samajwadi Party's Awadhesh Prasad by a margin of 54,567 votes. This defeat has been especially upsetting for the BJP since Faizabad is the constituency that houses the Ram Temple in Ayodhya, which the BJP has taken great pride in building.

The viral video shows a man in a skull cap shaming the Hindus of Ayodhya for not electing the BJP and saying, "Traitor Hindus, you were saved this time. Ram Bhakt Hindus saved you and did not let the Congress form government. Otherwise, Rahul (Gandhi) would give us reservation, the temple at Ayodhya would have been replaced by a mosque. But what's five more years? Allah will bless us. But there is one thing. If our leader would build us a mosque in Ayodhya or somewhere else, then we would vote for him without any doubt. Not just 400, we would bring 450, 500 seats for them. You are such traitors, Modi did everything for you, and you didn't even vote for him. (spits), shame on you. We (Muslims) are ashamed of you. One who isn't there for their own people, can't be there for anyone else."

The video is being shared on X with the caption, "To the people of Ayodhya, listen to this and be ashamed of yourself."

(Original text in Hindi: "सुनो अयोध्या वालों इस वीडियो को सुनो उसके बाद चुल्लू पर पानी में डूब जाओ।")

Click here to view the post and here for an archive.

A similar post on Facebook can be seen here.

FACT CHECK

BOOM found that the claims are false, the video shows a Hindu content creator, Dhirendra Raghav, who shared the video on his Instagram page.

We ran a reverse image search of some keyframes from the viral video on Google and found the original video on Instagram shared by Dhirendra Raghav., which has now been deleted The video was shared on June 4, 2024, with the caption, "The mosque will replace the temple"

(Original text in Hindi: "मंदिर की जगह मस्जिद बनेगी...")

Click here to view the post and here for an archive.

We even found comments from users below the video tagging the Uttar Pradesh police and demanding action against Dhirendra Raghav.

Dhirendra Raghav has a verified Instagram account with more than 47,000 followers. His bio states that he is an artist and he creates several pro-BJP videos. See here, here, and here.

We then looked for Dhirendra Raghav's Facebook profile and found that the viral video was shared here too.

The about section of Raghav's Facebook profile states that he is a resident of Agra, Uttar Pradesh.