Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) IT cell chief Amit Malviya recently tweeted a clipped video of Arijit Singh's performance at the Kolkata International Film Festival 2022 to make the false claim that the singer sang 'Rang De Tu Mohe Gerua' as a political message to state Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee.
The song 'Rang De Tu Mohe Gerua' is a song by the singer in the Shah Rukh Khan starrer Dilwale. The song title roughly translates to 'Colour me saffron' with gerua meaning saffron.
Malviya claimed that Singh chose the specific song to send a political message echoing the BJP's 'saffron' politics in the state.
BOOM found that the video is edited and shared with a misleading context. Singh, in the original video, can be heard singing a Bengali song 'Bojhena Shey Bojhena' before the song 'Rang De Tu Mohe Gerua' at KIFF. We also found that no such political message was delivered by Singh at any time during the program.
Several Bollywood celebrities including actors Amitabh Bachchan, Shah Rukh Khan, Rani Mukherjee, playback singer Arijit Singh were present in the inauguration ceremony of KIFF 2022 held on December 15. In the festival, Amitabh expressed his views about freedom of expression while Khan opened up about social media trolling amid boycott calls for his upcoming film 'Pathaan'. The event was also attended by Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee and other political leaders.
Malviya tweeted the clip saying, 'At the Kolkata Film Festival, Mamata Banerjee asked Arijit Singh to sing one of his favourites and he chose रंग दे तू मोहे गेरुआ (Rang De Tu Mohe Gerua)… It was an evening of realisations. From Mr Bachchan to Arijit, who reminded Mamata Banerjee, in her backyard, that the future of Bengal is saffron…'
Click here to view the post.
BJP West Bengal president Dr. Sukanta Majumdar also shared the video amplifying the same false claim.
Majumdar wrote, 'When Mamata Banerjee asked Arjit Singh to sing his favourite song at KIFF, he choose to sing रंग दे तू मोहे गेरुआ (Rang De Tu Mohe Gerua). The future of WB is saffron.'
Click here to view the post.
Fact Check
BOOM watched the live streaming of the inaugural ceremony of the Kolkata International Film Festival held on December 15 and found that the video tweeted by BJP leaders is edited.
We noticed that the event was streamed live on Mamata Banerjee's official Facebook page and its actual sequence can be watched from 1:24:33 hours to 1:25:10 hours timestamp.
In the original video, Arijit Singh can be seen singing a Bengali song 'Bojhena Shey Bojhena' before performing the song 'Rang De Tu Mohe Gerua' from Shah Rukh Khan's film 'Dilwale'.
The video shows Mamata Banerjee gestures to Singh, adding to the requests from the audience to sing something on the stage. The singer took a pause after hearing a request for a Bengali song 'Bojhena Shey Bojhena' from someone in the audience and then said, "SRK is in front of me. How can I sing something else?...So, I will quickly sing two lines."
Singh then first sings the Bengali song followed by the Hindi song 'Rang De Tu Mohe Gerua' from Shah Rukh Khan-starrer film 'Dilwale' released in 2015.