As the Indian state of Maharashtra geared up for elections on November 20, a video circulated in Facebook and X posts that falsely claimed it showed opposition leader Uddhav Thackeray proclaiming that he eats beef. Cows are venerated as sacred by India’s Hindu majority and their slaughter is illegal in many states. But the clip was taken out of context. Thackeray was in fact referring to a Buddhist minister of the ruling party who said he enjoys beef.
“Hindu voters, I eat beef, I eat beef … Do what you want to do with me – Uddhav Thackeray,” read a Marathi-language X post shared on October 24, 2024.
The post urged voters to keep Thackeray, the leader of the opposition Shiv Sena (UBT) party, out of office in the upcoming election.
It shared a video made up of two clips. The first shows Thackeray saying in Marathi: “I eat beef; eat beef — if anyone can do anything to me, then do it.”
The second shows rickshaw drivers accusing Thackeray of appeasing Muslim voters. They also recalled criticism from his father, a prominent Hindu nationalist politician, aimed at the Indian National Congress — the country’s main opposition party accused by critics of being overly favourable to the Muslim minority and to which Thackery is seen as close.
Text superimposed on the video reads: “What else will he do to get Muslim votes?” and “People have realised Thackery is worthless”.
The false claim surfaced ahead of the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly election on November 20, where Thackeray’s Shiv Sena (UBT) has teamed up with an opposition bloc that hopes to unseat the state’s ruling coalition led by the Bharatiya Janata Party (archived link).
The video was shared with similar claims on X and Facebook.
However, the video shows Thackeray referring to remarks by Kiren Rijiju — a member of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s cabinet who is Buddhist and said he eats beef.
Clipped video
A reverse image search on Google found a longer version of the video posted on the Shiv Sena (UBT)’s official YouTube channel on October 12, 2024 (archived link).
The video is titled: “Dussehra Gathering #2024 | Shivtirth, Dadar, Mumbai” (archived link).
Below is a screenshot comparison of the video shared in false social media posts (left) and the original video on YouTube (right):
Exactly two hours into the video, Thackeray can be heard recalling remarks by Rijiju — the minister for minority affairs — who said in 2015 he was a Buddhist and ate beef (archived link).
Thackeray also referred to the case of Aryan Mishra, a 19-year-old man killed in September by an armed mob that accused him of smuggling beef.
Authorities in India are often accused of failing to rein in Hindu hardliners, who form gangs of “cow vigilantes” to attack people accused of involvement in cattle slaughter (archived link).
“While Aryan Mishra was murdered on suspicion of cow smuggling, Rijiju says that I eat beef, I eat beef — if anyone can do anything to me, then do it. But no one said anything about it,” Thackeray said.
“On one hand, you kill innocent people, on the other hand, you give a place in the cabinet to someone who says that he eats beef.”
Thackeray does not say he ate beef anywhere in the video.
AFP has previously debunked a fabricated image that purports to show the opposition party leader bowing to the Indian National Congress party leader Rahul Gandhi.
