A 2015 Ganesh Visarjan video reappears with a COVID-19 spin
Video of few men with high-visibility jackets throwing large sculptured statues of what can be seen as the Indian God Ganesh over the bridge and into a river below has become viral on social media.
The captions along with the video claims, “Breaking news… Indians are now throwing away gods, claiming that it’s not helping them anymore with this pandemic, they are accepting Jesus now in large numbers”. The claims connect throwing the statues of the God by Indians as the gods could not save them from the current pandemic situation.
A Facebook profile named GIO TV posted the video with a caption stating, “Indians throwing away their idol into the river because it can’t deliver them from Covid-19.” The post was viewed about 8.3 thousand times and was shared around 360 times.
A post with a similar narrative was uploaded by Andrew Siokino which garnered 4.8 thousand views and around 380 shares.
YouTube
The viral video was also uploaded by ‘Piano Warrior’ in YouTube with a title,“Indians destroy their gods.”
Truth
The claim is False. The visuals that is seen in the viral video can be also seen in a 2015 video that has been posted in Facebook. This video was posted on 29 September 2015 by ‘Chandigarh News’ with a caption that said,”Afterwards the idol becomes ordinary statue and visarjan is to be done..as some may say…..Though the idol is gone, Ganesha lives forever! And that story is the same for the true being, the soul, too. It is in this spirit and fervor that the immersion is celebrated all over India…Everyone says, “Immersion?????????”…”
The caption clearly states that the video is of Ganesh Visarjan that takes place ten days after Ganesh Chaturthi. Ganesh Visarjan is when the idols/ statues of Lord Ganesh are submerged in water , to symbolize the cycle of birth and death. Ganesh Chaturthi in 2015 was celebrated on September 17 and therefore it can be established that Ganesh Visarjan took place ten days after.
Another Facebook post of 2015 uploaded by Facebook handle Hvkprasad Prasad with a caption that translates to, “This took place on the Krishna River Bridge in the Telangana State of NH 44 were the Telangana police were submerging the Ganpati”.
Therefore, this video is nowhere related to Indians throwing gods nor is it related to COVID-19. This was first debunked by AFP Fact Check.
