A video of a stage play performed by school children is being widely shared on social media claiming that a girl dressed as ‘Mother India’ was made to offer Namaz while taking away the crown on her head. This post claims that the stage play was performed at the Shishu Bharatiya Vidhyalaya located at the Malviya Nagar in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh. Let’s verify the claim made in the post.
Claim: A video of a school stage play in which a girl dressed as ‘Mother India’ was made to offer Namaz in Lucknow.
Fact: The video shared in the post is a clipped one. A full video of the stage play shows the school children sending out a message not to fight in the name of religion and to maintain social harmony. As part of this play, a girl dressed in a saree was made to offer different religious prayers in the respective religious customs (Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Christianity). Lucknow Police Commissionerate through a tweet confirmed that the video is clipped and informed that legal action was being taken against the persons who tweeted the clipped video. Hence, the claim made in the post is FALSE.
On reverse image search of the screenshots of the video, a video with similar visuals was found tweeted with a similar claim by a user on 15 August 2022. Responding to the tweet, Arvind Chauhan, a journalist working in the ‘Times of India’ group, tweeted the complete video of the stage play performed by the school students. The full video shows different groups of students and a girl dressed in a saree performing different religious prayers. As part of this play, the girl dressed in a saree was made to offer Hindu, Christian, Sikh and Muslim prayers in the respective religious customs.
The Police Commissionerate Lucknow tweeted the full video of this stage play performed by the students of the Shishu Bharatiya Vidhyalaya in Lucknow. Sharing the full video, Lucknow Police Commissionerate tweeted that a few anti-social elements have shared a clipped video of this stage play in an attempt to disturb communal harmony in the society. Lucknow Police Commissionerate through another tweet clarified that the full video of the stage play shows the school children presenting a message not to fight in the name of religion and maintain social harmony. Lucknow Police Commissionerate informed that legal action was being taken against the persons who tweeted this clipped video.
Several news websites published articles reporting the clarification given by the Lucknow Police Commissionerate regarding this viral clipped video circulating on social media.
To sum it up, a clipped video shared as the visuals of a school stage play making a girl dressed as ‘Mother India’ to offer Namaz.
