No, ‘Saare Jahaan Se Acha’ Wasn’t Performed at FIFA World Cup

The misleading video shared on social media is from a military music festival held in Moscow annually.  

(Photo: AP/Twitter/Altered by The Quint)

A day after the FIFA World Cup drew to a close, a video message went viral on social media claiming how the songs Saare Jahaan se Acha and Jimmy Jimmy Aja by Bappi Lahiri were played during the closing ceremony of the tournament.

The video showed a military band playing the two songs in front of Moscow’s Red Square. The captions accompanying it said: “Russia pays multiple tribute to India with “Jimmy” and and Saare Jahaan se achha” during closing ceremony of FIFA (sic)”; and, “Band performance at the Red Square, Moscow during current FIFA world cup.” Notably, one of the posts was shared by a user followed by PM Narendra Modi.

However, the video is not from any ceremony of the FIFA World Cup, but from a Spasskaya Tower International Military Music Festival in which the Indian Tri-Services band was performing, as first pointed out by SM Hoax Slayer. The festival is held annually in Moscow, and has attracted a participation of more than 40 countries.

For the 2017 festival, the Press Information Bureau had even come out with a press release, in which it said:

A Tri-Services band from the Indian Armed Forces has also been invited to participate and perform in the prestigious event. The participation of the Tri-Services Band would foster better ties between the Armed Forces of the two countries and is also a befitting acknowledgement of the professional skills of the Indian Armed Forces bands.

PIB press release in August 2017

The same video currently doing the rounds of social media was even shared from the official Facebook page of Bollywood actor Amitabh Bachchan around two weeks ago, with the caption, “This is Moscow Russia.. band playing ‘saare jahan se achcha’.. wait for it”.

However, Bachchan did not make any erroneous mention about the event being related to the FIFA World Cup in any way.

This is not the only fake story around the FIFA World Cup. Earlier, a video post showing a team of footballers praying and singing in a hotel room claiming that they belonged to the Croatian national team had gone viral on social media. But as it turned out, the players belonged to a Brazilian club football team.

In addition to this, another video showing hundreds of Croatian fans supposedly cheering for their team in their country went viral on social media. Except, this video was not from Croatia, but from the San Fermin celebrations held every year in July in Spain's Pamplona.

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