Soon after the Indian National Congress (INC) swept the majority votes in the Karnataka elections, Hindu right-wing supporters and BJP leaders started flagging a video on Twitter with claims of “dooms days” in the Southern State.
The viral video which is being shared by many Hindutva outfits is said to be from Bhatkal in the Uttara Kannada district. The trimmed video depicts a celebratory rally where a Muslim person hoisting a green flag with a crescent moon and star is being linked with a Pakistani flag.
The right-wing trolls on Twitter swiftly claimed that Muslims waved the Pakistani national flag and raised “Pakistan Zindabad (long live Pakistan) slogans, and several social media users shared the video intended to create communal tension.
However, a saffron-coloured flag with OM written on it and a blue flag (which represents the Dalit movement) with Babasaheb Ambedkar’s image is unambiguously visible in the clip.
Following are the Twitter threads shared by Hindutva and BJP supporters.
BJP IT Cell head Amit Malviya shared the video with a similar claim.
Fact check
When we observe the two flags, we notice a lot of differences between the Pakistani flag and the one which was hosted at the celebration. Pakistani flag is dark green with a white strip on its side but the flag waved in the rally is the Islamic flag which is bright green, representing the faith in general.
The crescent moon and star symbol are globally associated with Islam and some Islamic counties have this symbol on their flags that include Turkey, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Algeria, and Libya.
According to a person from Bhatkal named Salahuddin quoted by Alt News said there was no communal spin attempt in the celebration by waving the green flag, “All the flags had been installed at the same time, green, orange as well as Babasaheb Ambedkar flag during the celebration.” He said Hindu Congress supporters and Muslims were rejoicing together and Hindus had orange flags in their hands.
Similarly, there was another attempt to turn it into a communal victory. An edited tweet that was attributed to Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif congratulating the Congress following their win appeared on the Net the fact-checkers debunked it as a morphed tweet.
It has become a trend to twist facts and present them in a fashion that denotes Muslims as anti-national and in other cases as pro-Pakistan elements that are a threat to the country. Many gullible citizens cannot sift the fact from the dangerous fiction and fall prey to propaganda.
Follow on Twitter | Posted by Sayima Ahmad | 
