A video showing school children being taught verses from the Quran at a school in Shivamogga, Karnataka is in fact only one video in a two-part clip where the second video shows the same students being taught Sanskrit Shlokas from the Bhagavad Gita.
The video has been shared on Facebook and Twitter with the message that states:
The video has also been retweeted by Dr Aishwarya S, an editor at fake news website Postcard News.
Postcard News also posted the video to its Facebook page only to delete it later.
Not just Postcard but Kannada news channel Dighvijay 24X7 News also reported the video incorrectly.
The school in the video is Vidyadeep Vidyalaya, a kindergarten school in Shivamogga district of Karnataka.
Principal Arathi Janardhan explained that her students were not just taught verses from the Quran but also verses from the Bhagavad Gita and the Bible.
In the second video accessed by BOOM, it clearly shows the same children from the first video reciting a Sanskrit Shloka. The video has one teacher narrating the Shloka which the students then repeat. The teacher who taught the verses from the Quran is also present in the classroom.
The Principal added that she was surprised when some parents approached her after few days later claiming that they heard their children were being “converted” at the school.
“We also took them to a practice session where the children recited verses from the Bible in addition to the Gita and Quran. They told me that they had only seen the video of the Quran verses which was all over Facebook and Whatsapp and hence were concerned.”
The school has since scrapped the program for Independence Day next month because of the backlash it has received online.
Kannada website Shivamogga Live also fact-checked the viral video on 30 June. Nitin Kaidotlu, founder of the website said that the video was viral on Whatsapp in the district.
“Only one video was made viral by some people. The second video shows the children learning Hindu scriptures too,” the website’s founder said.
(The story was first published on BOOM Live and has been republished with permission.)
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