A video featuring Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressing a public gathering about the Constitution is circulating on social media with a claim that he said, “I will replace the old constitution with one based on Manusmriti, which not even Baba Saheb Ambedkar himself could abolish.” It’s a fake video aimed at misleading voters.
On performing a reverse image search using the keyframes of the video, we found news reports featuring an image of Modi in the same attire (here and here) discussing this speech. We found that Modi delivered this speech at an election rally in Rajasthan’s Barmer on 12 April 2024. Furthermore, contrary to the claim made in the viral post, media reports confirmed that Modi said the Constitution is everything to the government, and even Babasaheb Ambedkar cannot abolish it.
Upon further research, we located the full video of the speech on Modi’s official YouTube channel. In it, the PM stated, “Regarding the Constitution, you should accept it, and take note of these words of Modi, even if Babasaheb Ambedkar himself were to appear, he wouldn’t be able to abolish the Constitution. Our Constitution is akin to the Geeta, Ramayana, Bible, and Quran for the (BJP) government.” Then Modi criticised the INDIA coalition and the Congress manifesto. The video was edited from the time frame 34:28 to 34:46 and then shared on social media.
To sum up, Modi did not mention implementing Manusmriti by changing the Constitution.
This story was originally published by Factly, as part of the Shakti Collective. Except for the headline, excerpt and introduction para, this story has not been edited by ThePrint staff.