The video of a man criticising India's first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and blaming him for "removing" Hinduism from school syllabus in India has been shared by social media users with a claim that he is a Muslim minister in the United Kingdom (UK) government.
However, we found that the man in the video – Jay Lakhani – was neither a Muslim nor a minister. According to video interviews of his found online, Lakhani was the director of an organisation called Hindu Academy and he taught Hinduism.
A LinkedIn page on his name says that he was a "theoretical physicist and global speaker", however, we were unable to independently verify that. We didn't find any record of him having a ministerial role in the UK government.
CLAIM
The caption shared with the 2:25 seconds viral video says, "Nehru had so much hatred for Hindus and Hinduism. Any wonder his greatgrand (sic) children are emulating him?! He is a Muslim minister in UK, look what he says....very surprised. Spare a minute and watch!"
In the video, the person says, "In India, for some very weird reason they decided to take Hinduism out of the syllabus. You can't teach Hinduism in a single Indian school."
He then goes on to criticise Nehru and says, "And how did this come about? I will be very blunt and honest on camera. This came about with the compliments of Nehru. This foolish man thought Hinduism should be taken out of the syllabus as it's a secular world. In India, which is supposed to be a secular nation, they took Hinduism out of the syllabus."
He goes on to say, “Now with Narendra Modi, I have been telling him put it (Hinduism) back in the syllabus. But there are lot of issues, political issues he has to fight before he can reintroduce it. But he will do it in his own time. He is a very clever politician. He will succeed.”
WHAT WE FOUND OUT
We took a screenshot of the person in the video and conducted a reverse image search on Google and found that the video uploaded on a YouTube channel called 'Hindu Academy'.
By going through the other videos in the channel, we found that the person answering the question is called Jay Lakhani. We also found other videos where people introduce him as "Jay Lakhani". According to his LinkedIn page, Lakhani is a theoretical physicist and speaker.
A Facebook page with the same name as the YouTube channel also had videos featuring Lakhani.
According to the website of Hindu Academy, it is an organisation that takes initiatives to team and promote Hinduism in schools in the UK.
As per one of the posts on the page talking about Lakhani's life, he passed away on 4 December 2020. The description didn't mention him being a Muslim or a minister in the UK government.
An archive of the post can be found here.
(Photo Courtesy: Facebook/Screenshot)
We found an obituary published about him on 8 December 2020, that said that Lakhani was the first Hindu tutor at Eton College and was known for conducting GCSE and A-Level Hinduism classes in the UK. This was also mentioned in the LinkedIn and Facebook profile we found on him.
We also found a news report talking about his appointment as a Hindu tutor at Eton.
We conducted a keyword search on Google and didn't find any report or document that identified him as a Muslim person or a minister in the UK government.
Evidently, a video of a UK-based professor talking about Hindusim and criticising Jawaharlal Nehru has gone viral with a false claim.
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