A video is being shared on social media claiming it as the visuals of people welcoming a miraculous river in South India. This post claims that the river in the video flows only for a month between the new moon day of ‘pitru paksha’ to the new moon day of Deepawali every year. Let’s verify the claim made in the post.
Claim: Video of a miraculous river that appears only for a month every year.
Fact: This video shows Mayiladuthurai people welcoming Cauvery water in Tamil Nadu. This video was shot in September 2017, while Mettur Dam in Tamil Nadu released Cauvery water for the ‘Cauvery Mahapushkaram 2017’ event that was held in Mayiladuthurai. The ‘Cauvery Mahapushkaram’ is celebrated for 12 days once in every 12 years. While it is true that farmers in most parts of Tamil Nadu treat Cauvery as goddess, there is no miraculous history behind the flow of the Cauvery river in this video. Hence, the claim made in the post is MISLEADING.
On reverse image search of the screenshots in the video, videos with similar visuals were found published on social media at least since 2017. They can be seen here and here. These users mentioned it as the visuals of Cauvery water entering the Mayiladuthurai district in Tamil Nadu. When we searched for more details using relevant keywords, we found the details of this video through a tweet made by the ‘One India Tamil’ news website on 19 September 2017. ‘One India Tamil’ reported it as the visuals of Mayiladuthurai people welcoming Cauvery water in Tamil Nadu.
Reporting the complete details of this video, ‘One India Tamil’ news website published an article. According to the article, the Mettur Dam in Tamil Nadu released Cauvery water for the ‘Cauvery Mahapushkaram 2017’ event that was held beside the banks of Cauvery in Tamil Nadu. This ‘Cauvery Mahapushkaram’ event reportedly took place between 12 and 24 September 2017. The ‘Cauvery Mahapushkaram’ event organizers and farmers bowed and welcomed Cauvery while it was entering Mayiladuthurai. After suffering 144 years of drought in Cauvery, Mayiladuthurai farmers reportedly fell on the Cauvery waterway and worshipped her as a goddess. Reporting the complete details of this Cauvery Mahapushkaram event, several other news websites published articles in 2017. They can be read here and here.
According to a report by the ‘India.com’ news website, the ‘Cauvery Mahapushkaram’ is celebrated for 12 days once every 12 years. In 2019, ‘Milaap’ crowdfunding platform published a similar video, where a young farmer described the struggle of Tamil Nadu farmers due to the lack of Cauvery water. He mentioned in the video that for the last three years, the Cauvery river was not flowing in most of the villages in Tamil Nadu. From all these pieces of evidence, it can be concluded that the video shared in the post is old and there is no miracle in the flow of this river.
To sum it up, an old video of Tamil Nadu farmers welcoming the Cauvery river is falsely shared as a miraculous river that flows for only a month every year.
