Old clip of political protest in southern India mispresented as 'Muslims protesting against Hindu leader'

An old video of a protest involving supporters of a political party in southern India that has joined Prime Minister Narendra Modi's coalition government has recirculated in posts.  It misleadingly claimed they were "jihadists" opposed to their leader joining forces with Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). In fact, the clip circulated in news reports before the 2024 election. It showed supporters of the Telugu Desam party protesting over the selection of their local candidate. 

"Jihadists created a huge uproar in Andhra Pradesh after Chandrababu supported BJP. See what kind of anarchy they are spreading. Those who preach secularism should now tell what kind of mentality this is," read the Hindi caption in part of a post here on Facebook on June 8, 2024.

The video shows a group of people hitting a portrait of Chandrababu Naidu with a slipper and later throwing it to the fire.

 "Jihadist" is frequently used by Hindu-nationalist hardliners as a pejorative term for Muslims. 

Naidu, head of the Telugu Desam Party (TDP), said in his election campaign that he will continue to support affirmative action policies for Muslims.

India's reservation system guarantees quotas of government jobs and college admissions to members of lower caste groups and tribal communities.

Andhra Pradesh, which the TDP rules, guarantees Muslims four percent of government jobs and places at state education institutions, but Modi has said that he will not allow the reservation for lower caste groups to be given to Muslims "in the name of religion" (archived link).

The post surfaced after the results of India's marathon general election were announced and the Modi-led BJP failed to win a clear majority in the lower house of the parliament.  Modi remained in office but with a substantially reduced mandate and needed to rely on coalition allies to govern.

Naidu's regional TDP won 16 seats in the general elections and proved an important cog in the larger National Democracy Alliance that formed the new government.

The video was shared with similar false claims elsewhere on Facebook here and here and on social media platform X here.

But the video circulated almost a month before the general elections started in April.

Old video

A reverse image and keyword search on Google found a longer version of the clip uploaded on the verified Facebook page of Telugu-language news outlet Samayam Telugu on March 29 (archived link).  

"TDP party members and supporters slapped Chandrababu's photo in Guntakal," the Telugu caption of the video read.

Guntakal is a city in Ananthapur district of Andhra Pradesh (archived link).

According to the video's description, supporters and members of TDP got upset over the party's decision not to include leader Jithender Goud in their ticket for the assembly elections. 

The incident was reported by several news outlets here, here and here (archived links here, here and here). 

According to the reports, the party chose a "non-local" candidate instead. 

Below is a screenshot comparison of the clip shared in the false post (left) and the video uploaded on Samayam Telugu's Facebook page (right):

AFP found no credible reports of Muslims protesting against Naidu after he allied with the BJP-led coalition.

AFP has debunked more misinformation around India's elections here.