An edited image of a billboard in London’s Piccadilly Square has gone viral on social media with the false claim that Queen Elizabeth II thanked Prime Minister Narendra Modi for sending COVID vaccines to the United Kingdom. India has been playing a vital role in the large-scale supply of Covid-19 vaccines across the world. On March 5, London received a batch of Made in India Covid-19 vaccines, said External Affairs Minister of India, Dr S Jaishankar. A post is viral in this context, on both Facebook and Twitter with a claim that Queen Elizabeth II thanked Prime Minister Narendra Modi for Covid-19 vaccine. The thank-you note was displayed on a giant screen at London’s world-famous Piccadilly Circus.
The text on the screen along with the image of the Queen reads, “Thank you PM Modi for sending us COVID-19 vaccines. You are a good boy.”
A Facebook user, Pawan Kumar, shared this morphed picture of the billboard, garnering over 1,000 likes. The post had been viewed about 1.2 million times, according to Facebook’s fact-checking tool, at the time of writing this article. He shared the image with the caption, “In London, Queen Elizabeth II placed a billboard thanking Modi for helping England with the coronavirus vaccine. It is such a matter of pride for our country that even the British, who ruled India for 200 years, are taking help from us today, and are praising us. Thank you Modiji for making us proud today,” in Hindi.
India had been ruled abruptly for over roughly a century by the Britishers, which still has it bitter roots and tastes in the country. British raj, period of direct British rule over the Indian subcontinent from 1858 until the independence of India and Pakistan in 1947. The raj succeeded management of the subcontinent by the British East India Company, after general distrust and dissatisfaction with company leadership resulted in a widespread mutiny of sepoy troops in 1857, causing the British to reconsider the structure of governance in India. The British government took possession of the company’s assets and imposed direct rule. The raj was intended to increase Indian participation in governance, but the powerlessness of Indians to determine their own future without the consent of the British led to an increasingly adamant national independence movement.
Anti Fake News War Room (AFWA) has found in its research that, according to a report in Reuters, a UK government spokesperson confirmed that the country has ordered 100 million doses of AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine, of which 10 million doses will come from the Serum Institute of India. While EAM Jaishankar tweeted that Made in India vaccines were delivered in London, though one couldn’t find any media report on Queen Elizabeth II thanking India or PM Modi for the coronavirus vaccine.
Although, the original image, dates back to April 2020, containing a message of hope amid the coronavirus pandemic. It has been edited to include the text, “Thank you PM Modi for sending us COVID-19 vaccines. You’re a good boy.” Thus, the viral claim is absolutely misleading.
