Fact Check: News of Kerala Temple Turning into Mosque, Fake

Fact Check: A video montage depicting a mosque has gone viral on social media, accompanied by a claim in Hindi that Muslims have taken over an ancient Hindu temple in Kerala and converted it into a mosque. It further claims that, despite objections from the Hindu community, Kerala's "left-communist" government has decided not to act. According to the claim, Muslims have just taken over the supposed temple. The video has been reposted with the same description by other Twitter users. An identical claim is made in the video, which has gone viral on Facebook.

False communal spin

We took a close look at the footage and detected documentary-style alterations in the video montage. This was the first warning sign. Then we saw that a watermark appeared on the video after only a few seconds. It says "TSOI," which translates to "Thousand Shades of India" later. The video's title implied that it was most likely taken from a documentary.

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Using this as a lead, we went to Thousand Shades of India's (TSOI) Instagram profile and discovered the same video, which was posted on December 20, 2021. The video is of the Zeenat Baksh Mosque in Mangaluru's Bunder, which contains one of India's oldest Muslim communities, according to the caption on the post.

According to the page's YouTube bio, Thousand Shades of India honours the country's unique traditions. "We celebrate India’s diversity in life and livelihood, cultures and traditions, heritage and history, art and craft, through our stories and documentaries!" it says. It appears that the purpose of the video was to highlight the structure's beauty.

Mangaluru's Zeenat Baksh Mosque

We used Google to do a keyword search and discovered blogs and news pieces about this mosque. The Karnataka Tourism Department has one of these blogs. Masjid Zeenat Baksh is located in Mangaluru's Bunder neighbourhood, according to the Tourism Department's blog. The mosque depicts Prophet Mohamed's life tales and is thought to have been built by Arab Muslim traders around 644 AD. A portion of the blog article also emphasises the mosque's unique characteristics. According to the blog article, the mosque was once a Hindu temple.

Many accounts, including the Karnataka Tourism Department's website, claim that Tipu Sultan restored and renamed the mosque in the 17th century.

Has a temple in Kerala been taken over by Muslims?

We looked for news reports on the subject but couldn't find any. If this were accurate, practically every news outlet would have covered it. There has also been no news of a temple in Mangaluru being taken over.

As a result, a video montage of a mosque in Mangaluru was circulated with a fake communal spin, claiming that Muslims had forcibly occupied an old temple in Kerala.