A video going viral on social media (here, here, and here), shows a group of men wearing Bajrang Dal T-shirt and holding trident-like weapons while taking an oath. The post is being shared with claims that members of the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) and RSS are taking an oath to kill Christians in Chhattisgarh from 01 March 2025.
Let’s verify the claim made in the post through this article.
The archived post can be found here.
Claim: The video shows members of the Vishva Hindu Parishad and RSS taking an oath to kill Christians in Chhattisgarh from 01 March 2025.
Fact: The viral video shows members of the Bajrang Dal taking an oath in Telugu to protect Hinduism, its values, and culture, without mentioning Christians or other religions. The people in the video are also seen wearing T-shirt with the name Bajrang Dal written in Telugu. Multiple incidents of Bajrang Dal members taking oaths, including the Trishul Diksha, were found, but none match the viral video. A similar video posted on Facebook on 27 December 2024 confirms it’s not recent. Further, no credible reports support the claim of VHP & RSS members taking an oath to kill Christians in Chhattisgarh from 01 March 2025. Hence, the claim made in the post is FALSE.
We conducted an internet search using relevant keywords to verify the viral claim. However, we found no credible reports confirming any incident of VHP & RSS members taking an oath to kill Christians in Chhattisgarh, India, starting from 01 March 2025. Given the significance of such an incident, it would have likely attracted substantial media coverage, but no such reports were found.
Upon reviewing the viral video, we noticed that the individuals were wearing a Bajrang Dal T-shirt with the name written in Telugu. These members were seen taking an oath in Telugu to protect Hinduism, its values, and its culture. They pledged to defend the faith and the nation from any threats, committing to support Hindu unity and protect the community. Nowhere in the video did they mention Christians or any other religion.
We used relevant Telugu keywords and found multiple incidents of Bajrang Dal members taking oaths, such as the distribution of Trishuls to 400 Hindu men in Nizamabad on 19 February 2023 (here) and the ‘Trishul Diksha programme in Khammam on 11 February 2024 (here and here). However, none of these match the viral video.
We also searched the internet to check if such incidents occurred recently in Chhattisgarh and found a report by Dainik Bhaskar. According to the report, a grand Trishul Diksha was to be organised by VHP and Bajrang Dal in Rajnandgaon on 27 November 2024, where participants were to take an oath to protect the country, religion, and culture. However, we found no visuals matching the viral video, and nowhere in the reports was it mentioned that the oath was taken to kill Christians.
A reverse image search of the keyframes from the viral video led us to a Facebook post dated 27 December 2024, featuring the same video which confirmed that the video is not recent and is not from February 2025.
To sum up, the viral video does not show RSS/VHP members taking an oath to kill Christians in Chhattisgarh from 01 March 2025.
(Note: This story was first published by Factly and is republished by ETV Bharat as part of Shakti Collective.)
