Kerala Yoga Ashram Photo Viral As 'Bharatiya' Culture In New Zealand

An image of people sitting on a floor to eat food at a yoga ashram in Kerala is being shared as New Zealand. Social media posts falsely claim that the image shows the importance of Indian culture in New Zealand.

The image shows people sitting in rows on a blue floor with a banana leaf in front of them and waiting to be served food.

The image is being shared with the caption: Importance of Bharatiya Culture in New Zealand.

The post has been shared on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Archives of the Facebook posts can be found here and here. Archive of the tweet can be found here. Archive of the Instagram post can be found here.

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Fact Check

BOOM reverse searched for the image on Yandex and found an image of a similar looking place on a blog called Happy Yoga Travels. The images was filed in an entry titled "MY YOGA VACATION AT SIVANANDA ASHRAM IN KERALA, INDIA".

We then searched for Sivananda Ashram Kerala on Google and found it's website. The Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Dhanwantari Ashram is a yoga ashram near Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala run by The International Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Centres.

BOOM found an image of people sitting on a blue floor eating food off banana leaves on the 'Yoga Vacation' page.

Below is a comparison of the viral image (L) and the image from Sivananda Ashram Kerala (R). The physical descriptors like the yellow pillars and wall-mounted speakers have been circled in red.