Several media outlets across India have falsely attributed a two-year-old viral video where an Emirati columnist says “Jai Siya Ram” to Shaikh Mohammad bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces.
The video, shared by leading Indian channels such as Times Now and Zee News in the run up to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent visit to the UAE, claimed that Shaikh Mohammad bin Zayed had chanted the Hindu prayer greeting while addressing a spiritual programme conducted by the guru Morari Bapu in Abu Dhabi in September 2016.
The person in the video shown attending the ceremony is actually Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi, a UAE-based columnist and commentator on Arab affairs.
An exercise in a similar vein was the fast-spreading “pictures” of the first Hindu temple in Abu Dhabi that went viral on Twitter and WhatsApp over last weekend — even before the temple’s ground-breaking ceremony had been completed. What circulated instead were glimpses of the newly-constructed Lord Venkateshwara temple in New Jersey.
The Indian prime minister witnessed the groundbreaking ceremony of the first Hindu temple in Abu Dhabi — made possible by the generous gesture of Shaikh Mohammad in donating land to the Indian community for the purpose.
In his speeches at various forums on Sunday, Modi spoke at length about how India and the UAE have come closer in the past few years, sharing deeply cherished common goals and values. The temple in Abu Dhabi is widely seen as one of those common values — reflecting the UAE’s moderation, tolerance and respect for all humanity irrespective of their faith or creed.
The BAPS Swaminarayan Sanstha, which will manage the Abu Dhabi temple, thanked Shaikh Mohammad for the noble gesture and said the decision reflected the “guiding vision of tolerance and harmony of the founding fathers of the UAE”.