A provocative and communal WhatsApp forward demonising Muslims in India and admonishing Hindus for not supporting Prime Minister Narendra Modi enough is being falsely attributed to author and motivational speaker Shiv Khera.
BOOM reached out to Khera's office, who refuted the viral claim and stated that he has not issued any such statement as claimed in viral message.
Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won 240 out of the 543 seats in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, falling short of 32 seats to form a complete majority. While Modi is set to continue as the Prime Minister for the third term, this victory for the BJP is being considered its weakest yet as it would need to depend on its alliance partners. Several BJP supporters have been criticising Hindu residents of Ayodhya, which falls under the Faizabad Lok Sabha constituency, for not voting for the BJP, as the seat was lost to Samajwadi Party's Awadhesh Prasad.
The viral WhatsApp begins with 'Dear Non Muslims' and lists several achievements of his government and asking the Hindu community to support him. The message ends on a communal note by asking Hindus to either support Modi or "start learning namaz and stitching burkhas for the female members of your family."
The full message can be read below:
Click here to view the post and here for an archive.
Click here to view the post and here for an archive.
FACT CHECK
BOOM found that the viral WhatsApp message is fake, and Shiv Khera has not made the above mentioned communally charged remarks.
We ran a search with keywords from the viral message on Facebook and found that it has been circulating since several years dating back to 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023. In several other versions of the viral message, the quote was shared without any attribution to Khera.
We then looked for any news reports about Khera's statements praising Modi and did not find any results. After this, we scanned Khera's X and Instagram accounts and did not find this statement anywhere.
Finally, we reached out to Shiv Khera's team who sent us a statement from him clarifying that this quote was falsely attributed to him.
The statement read, "Dear All, an article is being circulated under my name with the title "Dear Non Muslim!" This is neither written by me nor are my viewpoints. Kindly do not circulate this further. Please forward my disclaimer to the person or group you have received it from. Regards, Shiv Khera."