India on November 19 played Australia in the Final of the ICC men’s cricket World Cup 2023 at the Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad, Gujarat. Following this, a video in which spectators at the packed stadium are heard chanting the Hanuman Chalisa in unison was shared widely on social media. Several media outlets picked up the clip and claimed that lakhs of spectators were heard chanting the Hanuman Chalisa at the Narendra Modi Stadium.
RSS mouthpiece Panchjanya tweeted the video with the same claim: Hanuman Chalisa being recited at the Narendra Modi Stadium during the finals match of the cricket World Cup. (Archived link)
फाइनल मैच के बीच नरेंद्र मोदी स्टेडियम में हनुमान चालीसा का पाठ।#INDvsAUSfinal pic.twitter.com/IJoMJJbL3z
— Panchjanya (@epanchjanya) November 19, 2023
Zee News carried this video in an article and claimed that before the start of the match, Indian cricket fans at the stadium had chanted the Hanuman Chalisa in unison. (Archived link)
Right Wing propaganda website OpIndia also made a similar claim while amplifying the video. (Archived link)
Similarly, media outlets including ABP News Gujarati, Asianet News, and Latestly, among others promoted the clip and accompanying claim.
Verified X user Chandan (chandan_stp) shared the video stating India lost the match despite 1 lakh people chanting the scriptures. He later deleted the tweet. (Archived link)
Fact Check
Alt News performed a reverse image search using frames taken from the viral video, which led us to other versions of the footage uploaded on the internet by several users last month, i.e. in October. This confirms that the video was not recorded during the ICC men’s cricket World Cup final match held on November 19.
We also searched using keywords related to the Hanuman Chalisa on YouTube and came across a video posted by YouTube channel ‘Jaipur Waley‘ on June 3, in which a crowd sitting in front of a temple is heard chanting the Hanuman Chalisa. This video contains the same audio which is heard in the viral clip. In other words, the audio from this video has been stitched to the stadium video in order to make it appear that lakhs of spectators chanted the Hanuman Chalisa in the stadium.
The same video was also posted on the Instagram page of ‘Jaipur Waley’ on June 3, in which the location of the mass Hanuman Chalisa recitation has been stated as Sanganeri Gate, Jaipur.
View this post on Instagram
To sum it up, a number of media outlets promoted an old and edited video and falsely reported that spectators chanted the Hanuman Chalisa in unison at the Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad during the cricket World Cup between India and Australia.
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