Fact Check: Old Video Of PM Modi Saying India Hasn’t Won Any War Without A Nepali Goes Viral As Recent

Claim
Prime Minister Narendra Modi said India hasn’t won a single war without the blood of a Nepali.
Fact
No, the viral video actually shows an old video of Modi addressing Nepal’s Parliament.

A video allegedly showing India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi saying that India has not won a single war without a Nepali after the recent escalation of tensions between India and Pakistan is going viral on TikTok.

The video goes viral in the wake of the May 10 ceasefire after military tensions between India and Pakistan escalated after gunmen killed 26 civilians in Pahalgam, in Indian-administered Kashmir, on April 22. Against this backdrop, TikTok user @the_introverted1 posted a video showing Prime Minister Narendra Modi speaking in Hindi.  In his speech, Modi says, “Hindustan [India] has not won a single war in which a Nepal has not shed his blood, and a Nepali may not have been martyred. Nepal’s brave soldiers have never backed down for the self-respect and defence of India. A field marshal of the Indian Army used to say that if a soldier says he is not afraid of dying, he is either lying or he is Gorkha. And when a Gorkha says he is not afraid of dying, then he is right.” Text superimposed on the video reads, “PM Modi speech after India and Pakistan war.”

The video posted on May 17 has garnered 13.5k likes, 344 people have commented and 520 people have shared until the last count.

The archived version of the TikTok video can be seen here.

Newschecker found the claim to be misleading.

Fact Check /Verification

To check the veracity of the claim made in the viral video, Newschecker split the video into several key-frames and conducted reverse searches on it. However, the search didn’t yield any relevant results.

We, then, analysed the video and noticed a person clad in traditional Nepali dress behind Modi. Taking a clue from it, we ran a keyword search on YouTube for PM Modi’s address in Nepal’s parliament. The search led us to a video, dated August 4, 214, posted on the YouTube channel named Bharatiya Janata Party. On checking the video thoroughly, we found that the footage from 7:17-minute onwards exactly matched the viral video.

We also found the same video, dated August 5, 2014, posted on the YouTube channel named News House India.

Further, we found an article, dated August 3, 2014, published on Rediff online regarding Modi’s address to Nepal’s parliament during his first visit to Nepal in 2014.

We found that the article reported that PM Modi, while addressing Nepal’s parliament, had said India had won no war without the sacrifices by Nepalese soldiers.

Thus, our findings clearly indicated that the video actually shows an old clip of Modi praising the contribution of Nepali Gorkha soldiers in India’s war. The clip has nothing to do with the recent stand-off between India and Pakistan and the contribution of Gorkha soldiers for India.

Conclusion

No, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi didn’t praise the contribution of Gorkha soldiers after the recent escalation of tensions between India and Pakistan in the aftermath of Pahalgam terrorist attack. The viral clip actually shows Modi addressing Nepal’s parliament in August 2014.

Result: Missing Context

Sources
Bharatiya Janata Party /YouTube, Aug 4, 2014
News House India , Aug 5, 2014
Rediff, Aug 3, 2014

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