Fact Check: Video criticising Western world shows a historian but not an IAS officer
A video of a person criticizing the Western world about their ‘Colonial Thinking’ and their condescending behaviour toward India and China is going viral with the claim that he is an IAS officer ‘Vijay Singh’, an Indian official talking on an international platform at Glasgow.
A video of a person criticizing the Western world about their ‘Colonial Thinking’ and their condescending behaviour toward India and China is going viral with the claim that he is an IAS officer ‘Vijay Singh’, an Indian official talking on an international platform at Glasgow.
The claim shared with the video goes as “See the daring of an Indian official on an international platform in Glasgow. Salute to Vijay Singh, IAS. Wonderful speech, every Indian must listen once …….”
https://www.facebook.com/ganesh.raykar.56/videos/2355457984630805
This video is viral on all platforms of social media including WhatsApp.
Fact check:
The claim that the video shows IAS officer Vijay Singh is misleading. Though the video was shot in Glasgow during COP26 Coalition, it was taken in 2021 and the person talking is a historian, director at Tricontinental, Vijay Prashad.
When we searched for IAS officer Vijay Singh, we found a few results but none of them matched the profile of the speaker.
During the search, we also found that the video was viral in January 2022 also. Some of the videos shared in 2022 had a logo of the COP26 coalition on the top right corner. And also, the moderator while introducing the speaker, called him Vijay.
Taking these as cues, when we searched the name Vijay in the YouTube channel of COP26 coalition, we found the same video published on their YouTube channel on November 10, 2021 titled Vijay Prashad People's Summit Speech from OUR TIME IS NOW #3.
The description of the video states Vijay Prashad (Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research) speech on decolonising the climate movement. Taken from COP26 Coalition's People's Summit for Climate Justice event 'OUR TIME IS NOW'.
The search with keywords “Vijay Prashad Tricontinental” gave us several results on Vijay Prashad.
According to tricontinental.org, Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian and journalist. Prashad is the author of thirty books, including Washington Bullets, Red Star Over the Third World, The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World and The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South. He is the Chief Correspondent for Globetrotter and a Columnist for Frontline (India). He is the Chief Editor of LeftWord Books (New Delhi). He had appeared in two films – Shadow World (2016) and Two Meetings (2017).
https://thetricontinental.org/
We also found his Twitter account.
In one of his tweets, he refuted the claim that was widespread in Jan 2022 by stating “From @BrutIndia comes a new packaged version of my speech at #COP26 - https://brut.
The The an This claim which was viral in January 2022 was debunked by a few fact check organizations.
Hence, the viral video shows Indian historian Vijay Prashad and not an IAS officer. The claim is MISLEADING.