Authors
A video tweet claims that priests in Karnataka demanded government officials to collect donations from a masjid and church when they came to collect money from their temple’s hundi. Hundi is a collection box used to collect money offerings from devotees.
Tweeted by the handle @TapasNiyama, the tweet states “Change started in #RamRajya” associating the accompanying video to the recent foundation stone-laying ceremony of Ram temple in Ayodhya, UP on 5 August.
The tweet in context was widely shared by social media users gaining 9.2K likes and 5.9K retweets at the time of writing this fact check.
Following this several other social media users shared this claim as well. You can see a few examples below.
We also came across the same 54-second video from five years ago posted by a Facebook user in 2015 with the caption “Kolaramma temple.”
Fact Check/ Verification
A comment under the claim in context by another user mentioned the incident to be from 2015. In his tweet, he added links to a third user who wrote that the original video was shared by Praja Tv on 31 October, 2015.
Social media user, Suresh N (@surnell) in his 4 August tweet stated the following:
“FYI @shilpamdas ji This video originally was shared by Praja TV on 31st Oct 2015 which is now unavailable and some organisations and people (if you can read Kannada, you will know with a clear agenda of Purohit and @BJP4Karnataka bashing) brought it out as if it is recent”
The tweet includes an image which shows posts by users who shared the video back in 2015.
In the same thread, Suresh shared a related article published by prajavani.net on 31 October, 2015 stating that the incident took place during former Chief Minister of Karnataka, Siddaramaiah’s rule.
The article published by Prajavani titled (translated), “Worship breaks at Kolaramma temple” details the incident in the video. According to this article, District Collector Dr KV Trilokachandra and Muzarai department officials arrived at the temple on orders from the High Court. Afterwhich, priests who were engaged in worship had an argument with the officials.
The temple’s priest Chandrashekar Dixit said that they generally worship in the temple and don’t get wages from the government. Temple devotees offer money on the Mangarati plate, Dixit adds, while also saying that the authorities had not given them any notice, as per the article.
Collector Trilokachandra is quoted as saying, “Kolaramma and Someshwara temple are under the custody of the Muzarayi department. The Hundi was installed in the Kolaramma temple eight years ago by the district administration.” While the priests appealed to the High Court for Hundi’s removal, they lost the case. Therefore, “Hundi has been established as per this order,” adds Trilokachandra. You can read the entire article linked below.
Other fact checkers have debunked this claim as well.
Conclusion
The claim in context misleads readers by using an old video from 2015 and passing it off as a recent one post the foundation stone-laying ceremony of Ram temple in Ayodhya on 5 August 2020.
Result: Misleading
Our Sources
Tweet: https://twitter.com/surnell/status/1290367586362748928?s=20
Prajavani news article
If you would like us to fact check a claim, give feedback or lodge a complaint, WhatsApp us at 9999499044 or email us at checkthis@newschecker.in. You can also visit the Contact Us page and fill the form.
