No, the background wall did not have Mahabharatha painting at the meeting of Modi and Biden.
Claim
Rating
Explanation
In the above Facebook post shared by the user, it is said that the wall had a verse from the holy book “Bagawath Gita.” The image shows our Prime Minister Narendra Modi sitting with United States President Joe Biden at his residence in New Delhi accompanied by some delegates from both countries. Behind them, we can see a painting depicting the Hindu god Lord Krishna riding the chariot of horses which belongs to one of the Pandava brothers Arjuna during the battle of Kurukshetra. This same background of Lord Krishna was shared by many users with similar claims that can be seen here,here, and here. Come, let’s check the veracity of this claim.
What’s the truth?
When we started our research using the simple Google reverse image search process, we found out that the same image was uploaded by our Prime Minister Narendra Modi from his official X page on September 8, 2023. According to the post, our Prime Minister said “Happy to have welcomed Lok Kalyan Marg, United States President Joe Biden to 7. Our meeting was very productive. We were able to discuss numerous topics that will further economic and people-to-people linkages between India and the USA. The friendship between our nations will continue to play a great role in furthering global good.”
Immediately we compared both images and came to know that the painting behind the wall shared by the social media users with a scene from Mahabaratha is fake. This means the painting is added digitally by altering the original image.
Likewise, we also got the video of this ocassion uploaded on our Prime Minister’s YouTube page namely “PMO India” with a title “PM Narendra Modi holds bilateral talks with US President Joe Biden” on 8 September, 2023. In the video we can see the similar set up but the background wall looks plain without any painting.
Also, we got an article published by The Hindu with a title “PM Modi, President Biden welcome progress in defence ties” where we can see the both sitting in the same background without any painting.
This cleary proves that the viral image is an edited version widely spread with misleading claims.
Conclusion:
Therefore, we conclude that the image circulated with the painting of a scene from Mahabaratha with Lord Krishna riding a chariot behind the wall is digitally modified. In reality, during the meeting between PM Narendra Modi and US President Joe Biden, there was no such image and this viral picture was added to the plain white wall and edited to create confusion.
