Fact Check: PM Modi Did Not Say ‘Hindutva Is a Card Gimmick For BJP’, Viral Clip Is Edited

Vishvas News (New Delhi) – A short clip from an old video interview of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been viral on various social media platforms. This seven seconds video snippet shows PM Modi allegedly saying, “Hindutva is a card gimmick for us to play during elections.” (हिंदुत्व हमारे लिए चुनावी खेल खेलने के लिए एक ताश का पत्ता है।)

Vishvas News conducted an investigation and found the claim to be false. The viral video was edited, and it must be noted that the original video is 24 years old. In the original video, PM Modi had actually said, “Hindutva is not a card to play during elections.” (हिंदुत्व हमारे लिए चुनावी खेल खेलने के लिए एक ताश का पत्ता नहीं है।)

What’s in the viral post?

On October 27, the Facebook page ‘People of Congress‘ shared an old video featuring Prime Minister Modi, where he can be heard saying, “Hindutva has never been an election slogan of the Bharatiya Janata Party. Hindutva is our article of faith. Hindutva is a card gimmick for us to play during elections.”

The accompanying description of the video reads, “#Hindutva is just a card used in elections for #BJP and #Modi.”

The text above the viral video clip reads, “Hindutva is a playing card for Modi.”

Click here to get the archived version of the viral post.

Investigation:

To investigate the viral post, Vishvas News ran it through the Invid tool and extracted keyframes. A Google reverse image search was also conducted on these keyframes, but the video could not be found anywhere.

Upon careful examination of the video, we noticed that the watermark of ‘Bole Bharat’ was visible at the bottom. Taking a clue from here, we further searched it through a Google Open Search using relevant keywords. 

We found an almost 14-minute-long video on the official YouTube channel of Zee News, titled “PM Modi’s 24-year-old interview”. The video description said “Today is the 72nd birthday of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. PM Modi did many such things in his political life, which remain in the headlines continuously. See 24 years old Narendra Modi’s life in this report.” The video was uploaded on September 17, 2022.

The viral clip can be found at the 10-minute mark in the video. In this segment, the interviewer asked Prime Minister Narendra Modi about his Hindutva slogan and its impact on elections, to which he replied, “Hindutva has never been an election slogan of the Bharatiya Janata Party. Hindutva is an article of faith for us. Hindutva is not a card gimmick for us to play during elections. This issue never existed.”

Vishvas News also reached out to BJP state spokesperson Avnish Tyagi for more information. He confirmed that the video is indeed old and has been edited, refuting the false claims associated with it.

More than 52 thousand people follow the Facebook page ‘People of Congress’ which shared the fake picture.