BJP Falsely Claims the Netherlands Issued Special Stamp To Mark 100 Years of RSS

The stamps have been made using the custom stamp option of PostNL's website.

Showing photos of 'special' stamps, social media users shared posts claiming that the image shows the Netherlands government's special postal stamps, issued to commemorate 100 years of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).

Who shared this claim?: Among other social media users, the official pages of the Bharatiya Janata Party, its IT cell head Amit Malviya, Madhya Pradesh's Deputy Chief Minister Rajendra Shukla shared this claim.

• News organisation Times Now also shared this claim during a broadcast.

  (Swipe to view claims.)

(Archives of more posts sharing this claim can be seen here and here.)

Is it true?: There are no credible reports to confirm that the Dutch government has issued any such stamps, making the claim false.

How do we know?: To know whether the Netherlands had released such a stamp or issued any official statement expressing support for the RSS, we ran a keyword search.

• However, we did not find any credible reports or official releases in English or Dutch.

• We noticed that the image carried a logo for an organisation called the 'Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh Nederland'.

• Taking a cue from this, we looked for this organisation on social media, which led us to a Facebook page with the same name.

• While we did not find this specific image on their page, we saw that they had made and shared a similar stamp to commemorate the consecration of the idol at Ayodhya's Ram Mandir.

• We also checked the official website of the Netherlands' postal service, known as PostNL, to see if it carried any stamps for the RSS.

• While we didn't find any relevant results, we came across a section that allows users to create custom stamps with any image of their choice.

Anyone can easily make customised stamps, as seen in these images showing stamps with a version of The Quint's logo.

What this means: The Netherlands' government has not officially made these stamps to commemorate 100 years of the RSS.

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