Fact Check: Old Video Of Vedic Mantras Recital In Croatia Passed Off As Hindu Event At The White House

New Delhi (Vishvas Team): A video circulating on social media shows some foreigners chanting Vedic mantras. The post asserts that it was filmed at the White House in the US. However, Vishvas News found in its investigation that this claim is false. In reality, the video is old and from an event in Croatia in 2018.

What’s in the viral post:

On September 4, Facebook user Sudesh Gaur (Archive) shared the video with the caption “Jai Sanatan. Shri Rudram Stotram was recited at the White House in America. It is impossible to imagine that Americans can pronounce it so cleanly. Is it a great pride? Sri Rudram Stotram was recited by Jeffrey Arhardt at the White House. See this awesome video and feel proud being Sanatani.”

Investigation:

To begin our investigation, we extracted keyframes from the video using the INVID tool and conducted a reverse image search on Google. We found this exact same video uploaded on a YouTube channel named Krishna Singh on April 28, 2018, with the description “Shri Rudram and Chamakam performed by 400+ Europeans in Croatia. The European Veda association would be performing this across many places in Europe for world peace. Amazing! Absolutely proud to be born in the lineage of Vedic tradition. Looks like others are picking up where we left it.”  

We also found the same video on another YouTube channel named Svns Bhakthi Channel, with the description saying that the video was from Croatia.

Taking a cue from here, we conducted a Google search using keywords like ‘European Veda Association’ and found the website of the Ved Union, which is a European network that organises such programmes. On their website, we found information about mantra chanting programmes held in various parts of Europe in March, and April 2018. Additionally, there were images of the mantra chanting programme held in Croatia during that period, which closely resembled the video going viral. The similarities between the two can be seen in the collage below.

The research so far established that the viral video is from Croatia, not from the USA.

Now we searched for any recent events involving bhajan, kirtan, or chanting of mantras at the White House but found no such reports. But we found news reports from October 2022, of US President Joe Biden hosting a Diwali programme at the White House. However, there were no reports of bhajan or mantra chanting at this event.

We reached out to journalist JP Ranjan, who covers international affairs for Dainik Jagran, for confirmation. He affirmed that there was no news of any such programme taking place at the White House recently.

This post was shared by a Facebook user named Sudesh Gaur. According to the user’s profile, he is from Kanpur and currently lives in Bhopal.

Conclusion: Vishvas News found in its investigation that this claim is false. The video is old and from an event in Croatia in 2018.

Tags

• Hindu Customs
• Mantras
• USA
• White House