Old video of a Malaysian saree draping specialist shared now with a communal narrative - FACTLY
Sai Krishna Muthyanolla
May 2, 2023
A video is being shared on social media claiming it is the visuals of a Muslim draping a saree to a Hindu woman at her wedding. The post claims the man in the video is Rafiq, a Muslim who is said to be made draping sarees for Hindu women as a profession. Let’s verify the claim made in the post.
Claim: Video of a Muslim man draping a saree for a Hindu woman at her wedding.
Fact: The man who is seen draping a saree for a woman in the video is Malaysian Saree draper Joseph Rakesh. The video shows Joseph Rakesh draping a saree for a model as part of the Zobha fashion show in 2019. The video is not from a Hindu wedding and there is no communal angle to the 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 published by a YouTube channel named ViVi Tv in July 2019, with the title, “How to Wear a Saree Simple Steps”.  The description of the videos stated it is the visuals of Malaysian Saree Draper Joseph Jerry draping a saree effortlessly in 3 minutes.
When we searched for further sources, we found one more video of the same person draping a saree to another woman wearing the same dress. The description of the video states, “How I watched Joseph Jerry, the Malaysian Saree man, drape the saree effortlessly within 3 minutes for one of the models during Zobha’s fashion show.”
Joseph Jerry shared the images of models whom he draped sarees for the Zobha fashion show in 2019 and stated-“Specially draped by me 19 top models.thanks to zobha kanjivaram for appointing my services.its really not easy maan u need a lot of energy to make u look slim.”
On searching for further sources, we found the same woman, whom Joseph Jerry draped saree in the video, walking in a fashion show conducted by the Zobha, a Malaysian-based textile manufacturing company, in 2019. A few other images of Joseph draping sarees to other women can be seen here and here.
‘Starlifestylemy’ posted an image of Joseph draping a model on Instagram and said, “We have Rakesh Joseph, a master at tying sarees in the studio today. Watch out for our how-to #FCX video releasing soon.” An article published by ‘The Star’ news website on Rakesh Joseph can be seen here. From all these pieces of evidence, it can be concluded that the man draping the saree to a model in the video is Rakesh Joseph, not Rafiq and there is no communal angle to relate with the video.
To sum it up, an old video of a Malaysian saree draper Joseph tying a saree to a model for a fashion show shared now with a communal narrative.