A short video clip of Madhya Pradesh CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan’s saying, “We used to keep our feet on our teacher’s head” is being widely shared on social media claiming that he insulted his teacher. Let’s fact-check the claim made in the post.
Claim: Video clip of Madhya Pradesh CM Shivraj Singh saying, “We used to keep our feet on our teacher’s head”.
Fact: Full length videos of Shivraj Singh Chouhan’s speech shows that he had immediately corrected his mistake by saying, “To take our teacher’s blessings, we used to keep our head at his feet”. But the viral video doesn’t show this correction part. Hence the claim made in the post is MISLEADING.
Since the viral video ended abruptly, we searched for the full-length video by taking a cue from the background text that appeared in the viral video and found a full length video shared by “Office of Shivraj” on 04 September 2022.
This video is from the “Training programme for Newly Appointed Teachers” event organised on 04 September 2022 at Bhopal. In this event, the Chief Minister interacted with newly hired teachers where he spoke about importance of teachers in building a good society.
From 41:10 timestamp, the speech goes like this – “Today I will tell you, my story. As I said earlier, I studied at a government school in Jait, even in Bhopal I studied in Government school. Our teacher, who is still alive, was Shridhe Ratan Chand Jain. I go to him, and we keep our feet on his head…(hesitantly), on his head we always. (pauses)” But at 41:38 timestamp, he immediately rectifies the mistake and says, “To take his blessings, we used to keep our head at his feet”
Other full-length versions of his speech were also uploaded on “Shivraj Singh Chouhan” and “OTV” YouTube channels. In these two videos, he can be seen correcting his mistake at 1:09:43 and 0:27 time stamps respectively.
To sum it up, even though Shivraj Singh Chouhan had a slip of tongue about his teacher, he immediately corrected it. But a clipped video of him committing a mistake during the speech is being shared without showing correction.
