Fact Check: Video of a Hindu priest beating a woman makes a misleading claim about caste, gender discrimination
The video of a Hindu priest beating a Harijan (Lower caste) woman is in circulation with a misleading claim that it was provoked due to gender and caste discrimination.
A video showing a Hindu priest holding a woman’s hair and beating her violently is being shared on Twitter and also Facebook with a claim that she was refused entry into the temple, due to gender and caste discrimination.
The caption on the post shared by a Facebook user goes as “Bolo #jaishriram. A Harijan woman who tried to enter a Hindu Temple was beaten up mercilessly by the head priest for being a woman of lower caste.
The video is also in circulation on Twitter with the caption: “A woman who tried to enter a Hindu Temple was beaten up mercilessly by the head priest for being: 1. A woman. 2. A woman of lower caste. Poor Hindus get a different kind of Parshad (Grace) from Hindu Temples… Sad. Very Sad.”The face of the woman was blurred in the video shared on the micro-blogging platform.
Fact Check:
The claim is Misleading. The video is an old one and shows an incident that occurred in the year 2021. When we performed a reverse image search of the key frames extracted from the video, we found a few articles published in 2021 sharing the viral video.
The video was shared by Bhaskar.com, with a caption in Hindi that states “दरभंगा में श्माया माई के मंदिर में महिला को पीटा:स्त्री ने कहा- मुझ पर देवी आती हैं, मंदिर का दरवाजा खोल; पुजारी ने पिटाई की- 'सारा माता आना छुड़ा दूंगा, माई तो अपने गांव गयीं'
”When translated, it states: “Woman beaten up in Shyama Mai’s temple in Darbhanga. The woman says: “I am the goddess, open the temple for me”, the priest thrashed her saying “I will release the Goddess”.
This video was published on www.divyabhaskar.co.in
According to Navbharat Times, at the entrance of the famous Maa Shyama Temple located in Darbhanga, a female devotee was beaten by catching hold of her hair by the temple priest. Someone recorded the video of the incident and now that video has started going viral on social media. Soon as the act of the priest went viral on social media, the temple management immediately removed him from the job.
The victim was adamant about going inside the temple, while the temple was closed due to COVID protocol. When the woman tried to enter the temple forcefully, the priest got angry and beat her up and pulled her hair.
Hence, the video of a priest pulling a woman’s hair and beating her is an old one. The video is in circulation with a misleading claim that she was not allowed into the temple and was beaten up due to caste and gender discrimination.
Claim : Hindu priest beats a Harijan (lower caste) woman because she belongs to a lower caste
Claimed By : Social media users
Fact Check : Misleading