Viral WhatsApp message targets Congress and Gandhi family, distorts history

The message has many dangerous claims, which are attempts at communalising history, here is a point-by-point factcheck

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WhatsApp university has revised its hate syllabus to add more unsubstantiated claims of “70 years of Congress rule” and how “Hindus did not understand that A family  wanted to make the country a Muslim nation.” This bizzare Whatsapp has many dangerous claims, which are attempts at communalising history.

These include statements such as, “In 5 years, Muslims understood that Modi wants to create a Hindu nation,” because according to this whatsapp message, “The country was cut into two pieces, but no sound came from anywhere… Half Kashmir gone, no noise? Tibet went, there was no rebellion?” The writer of this drivel clearly seems to be a right-wing IT cell recruit because he goes on to add that there were “wounds like Reservation, Emergency, Tashkent, Shimla, Sindhu” inflicted, but “no one cared.”

The reference here to Tashkent reveals what inspired this message. While the intent is to draw the right-wing Whatsapp addict’s attention to the death of Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri, at Tashkent, it is inspired from the tile of Vivek Agnihorti’s 2019 film ‘The Tashkent Files’ which did not get the buzz or political promote the way his second film in the promised trilogy ‘The Kashmir Files’ has. 

The message mentions a cryptic collection of ‘scams’ such as “2G spectrum, coal, CWG, Agustawestland, Bofors” after which it claims “no body made any noise”. However a lot of noise was made when the cases were investigated. In fact The Bofors deal, signed in 1986, was reportedly to be one of the biggest reasons that the Rajiv Gandhi-led Congress was defeated in the 1989 Lok Sabha elections. The AgustaWestland chopper case continues to be investigated. According to a March 16, 2022 report in India Today, “The CBI has filed a supplementary chargesheet against India’s former Defence Secretary Shashi Kant Sharma” in the case. The CBI also named former “Air Vice Marshal Jasbir Singh Panesar, then Deputy Chief Testing Pilot SA Kunte, then Wing Commander Thomas Mathew and then Group Captain N Santosh in the supplementary chargesheet,” added the report.

However, facts don’t matter in the Whatsapp university, where this message claims that Congress leaders like Madhavrao, and Rajesh Pilot “were killed” and it made “no difference”. It then goes on to somehow connect this to “beef” claiming that “as soon as the beef was stopped, the catastrophe ensued” adding that “as soon as the national anthem was made compulsory, unhappiness followed… when asked to say Vande Mataram or Bharat Mata ki Jai, their tongues got stitched…” This dangerous compilation of slogans and messages have often been used to attack Muslims and other minority communities by communal Hindutva mobs, so called cow vigilantes, and so called nationalists mobs, all of whom have used these chants to target and attack innocent citizens. 

The messame defends “Demonetisation and GST” and then jumps to the trending topic of the day and says, “No one felt pain of Pandits of Kashmir who became refugees in their own country” adding that “Rohingyas are causing pain for Muslims.” It then attacks the Congress for making impotent or ‘namard’. The message hopes to rouse communal sentiments and celebrates a 2019 claim made by Union Minister Kishan Reddy that “50,000 temples closed or demolished in Kashmir due to terrorism will be opened or built”. It stresses on “But 50 thousand?” It added that if there are “stones on the window of a church or on a mosque, the media will cry foul for weeks. But not one or two, 50 thousand temples were closed. Didn’t any Hindu know about it? First forcibly drive away Hindus from the valley, then eradicate every sign of Hinduism, Think how big a conspiracy it was… To destroy the entire religion from the root of the whole valley? If Modi government had not come, hardly anyone would have known this!” 

However this claim by the Minister was fact checked in 2019 by Sanjay Tickoo, the eminent  Kashmir Pandit leader, who heads Kashmiri Pandit Sangharsh Samiti (KPSS) and has been actively seeking preservation of temples in Kashmir since 1989.  He said, “There are a total of just 5,000 to 7,000 temples across Jammu and Kashmir, however, the government has reached a figure of 50,000 temples?” 

Like the film the message blames “leftist journalists, Muslim intellectuals and Congress” and that they are the reason “the common Hindu remained ignorant of this history.” However this is not history, it is exaggeration at best, and dangerous fiction at worse. The message ends with “appeal to Nationalists” to forward it and “”wake up Hindu people of Hindusthan.” The motive of spreading communal hate is clear.

 

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