The Union cabinet recently granted classical language status to Marathi, Pali, Prakrit, Assamese and Bengali, increasing recognized classical languages to eleven. After this a statement attributed to Maharashtra Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) leader Uddhav Thackeray is being widely shared on social media platforms. The quote stated that after Marathi got the status of classical language, Thackeray has demanded the same status for Urdu language. During the investigation we found the ABP graphic to be edited. The viral claim is false.
Claim:
Facebook user Vaibhav Chore Patil shared the edited ABP graphic on his profile.
Other users too are sharing the same post.
Investigation:
The first thing we noticed on the graphic was an ‘ABP Majha’ logo. The text on the graphic was, “मराठी भाषेला अभिजात भाषेचा दर्जा मिळाला तसाच उर्दू भाषेलाही अभिजात भाषेचा दर्जा देण्यात यावा, हि आमची मागणी आहे.”
Translation: It is our demand that Urdu language should be given the status of classical language just like Marathi language got the status of classical language.
We then checked if Uddhav Thackeray gave any such statement, we did not find any news reports about the same and then we checked the social media handles of ABP Majha.
We then ran a reverse image search on just the picture of Uddhav Thackeray used in the graphic and found a post on X.
This clarified that the graphic is from 2022, but the post template was exactly the same.
We also found that the same template was recently used with a similar picture of Uddhav Thackeray on ABP Maza X handle.
The post was made on May 18, 2024.
In the next step of investigation we reached out to Rajya Sabha MP and deputy leader of Shiv Sena (UBT)Priyanka Chaturvedi, she said, “Lies and fake photoshopped tweets are a well known BJP tactic. They should be aware that their lies will be caught. One would hope with so many years in power they would have their work to showcase but with no work to show they resort to such lies!” She confirmed that the post was edited.
While Urdu is not a classical language as claimed by many in the comment section of these posts, eleven classical languages of India are, Tamil, Sanskrit, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Odia, Marathi, Pali, Prakrit, Assamese and Bengali.
Conclusion: Viral graphic attributed to Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Uddhav Thackeray is edited. He did not give a statement about making Urdu a classical language of India. Viral claim is false.
