The 2020 Summer Olympics, officially the Games of the XXXII Olympiad, and branded as Tokyo 2020 is an ongoing international multi-sport event that is currently being held from 23 July to 8 August 2021 in Tokyo, Japan, with some preliminary events, which began from 21 July. Originally scheduled to take place from 24 July to 9 August 2020, the event was postponed in March 2020 as a result of the worldwide spread pandemic, and is held largely behind closed doors with no public spectators permitted due to the declaration of the state of emergency. Despite being rescheduled for 2021, the event retains the Tokyo 2020 name for marketing and branding purposes. This is the first time that the Olympic Games have been postponed and rescheduled, rather than cancelled. The Summer Paralympics will be held between 24 August and 5 September 2021, 16 days after the completion of the Olympics. With 120 Indian athletes (67 Men, 53 Women) participating in the tournament. Weightlifter Mirabai Chanu won a historic silver medal in the women’s weightlifting (49kg category) on July 24 and ended India’s 21-year wait for an Olympic medal in the discipline.
With a total of 100+ Indians participating in the Olympics this year, following this, a claim went viral with video of an event in Mongolia which was held in 2015 during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the nation is being shared with a false claim that the video shows athletes performing Surya Namaskar (sun salutation) at the opening ceremony of Tokyo Olympics. The video shows visuals of yoga participants dressed in the Indian tri-colour, performing Surya Namaskar – a sequence of 12 yoga postures. The clip has been captioned as, “Surya namaskar being performed at the opening ceremony of Olympics in Tokyo Japan with our National flag Dress Code… Video: 3.14 min Take pride in spreading our culture throughout the world.” Several Facebook have posted this video with the caption, “Surya Namaskar@ Olympics At the opening ceremony of the Olympics in Tokyo – Japan with our National flag Dress Code”.
Fragmenting the video into several keyframes using InVid Google Chrome extension and following it up with a reverse image search, it led to a video on YouTube which mentioned that the video is from Monogolia. Taking a cue from there, a relevant keyword search was conducted on YouTube and which led a live stream from May 2015 on the official YouTube channel of PM Modi.
Tweets were found from Ministry of External Affairs along with The Art Of Living foundation about the event. According to news outlets, Narendra Modi addressed a community reception and yoga event at the Buyant Ukhaa Stadium, organised by the Art of Living foundation of spiritual guru Ravi Shankar. The Art of Living is a non-profit organisation founded by Sri Sri Ravi Shankar in 1981, which is operating in 156 countries.
Thus, the viral claim is false as the aforementioned clip is from 2015, Mongolia and is not related with the ongoing Tokyo Olympics in any way.
