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  • 2021-01-14 (xsd:date)
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  • This video has circulated online in reports about pro-Punjabi language demonstrations since 2019 (en)
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  • A video of a Sikh man blackening Hindi text on a sign has been viewed tens of thousands of times in multiple posts on Facebook and Twitter in January 2021 alongside a claim it shows the Indian farmers’ protests, which began in November 2020. The posts claim the video is evidence of Indian farmers showing their opposition to the Hindi language. The claim is misleading; the video has circulated online since at least February 2019, when activists in the Indian state of Punjab demonstrated in support of the Punjabi language. The video was shared here in a Facebook post on January 9, 2021. It shows a man in a yellow turban painting over a Hindi-language sign in black as bystanders look on. Screenshot of misleading Facebook post The post’s caption in Hindi translates to English as: After vandalising Reliance Jio [telecommunication] towers, their next job is to not to allow the Hindi language. Who says they are farmers? The misleading post was shared as mainly Sikh farmers from the northern Indian states of Punjab and Haryana participated in protests against new agriculture laws introduced by the Modi administration. The demonstrations began on November 26, 2020, AFP reported here . The caption also refers to the vandalisation of telecommunication towers allegedly by protesting farmers in the two states, as reported here by the Hindustan Times. The video was also shared alongside the same claim on Facebook here , here , here , here and on Twitter here , here and here . The claim, however, is false. A reverse image search on Yandex by keyframes of the video, obtained using the digital verification tool InVID-WeVerify, found a 22-second clip from the same video published here on YouTube on February 22, 2019. The video's description, written in romanised Punjabi, loosely translates to English as: Lakha Sidhana, Mota Singh Naiwala blackening sign board for mother tongue Punjabi as first (language). Below is a screenshot comparison of the video shared in the misleading Facebook post and (L) and the YouTube video (R): Image comparing screenshot Lakha Sidhana is an Indian political activist in Rampura Phul town of Bathinda district in Punjab, as described in this report by the Hindustan Times. Sidhana is pictured in several other videos posted here on the YouTube channel in the name of another local activist Mota Singh Naiwala. (en)
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