DigitEye India Fact Checkers
As the election to Maharashtra Assembly is nearing, several claims have been surfacing targeting Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Uddhav Thackeray and one such post is being shared on social media linking him to erstwhile Mughal emperor Aurangzeb.
As Indian history reveals, Mughal emperor Aurangzeb in the 16th century was known for imposing strict Islamic rule on people including Hindus, unlike his predecessors who followed relatively tolerant religious practices in India. The narrative is to link the present Maharashtra Opposition leader to Aurangzeb.
सुनो इस कलंकी कि जुबानी!
*Aurangzeb was Uddhav Thackeray’s brother*
* It took 70 Years for Congress to prove that Aurangzeb was Great….
* The soul of Bala Saheb ji will be crying for giving birth to this useless man
Turned crazy for power! pic.twitter.com/VVyBfFDdvX— Raju (@jcama49) November 9, 2024
The post shows a video clip with super-imposed text in Hindi that reads, “Aurangzeb is my brother – Uddhav Thackeray. Remember while voting.”
A similar claim appears here and here.
FACT-CHECK
When Digiteye India team checked for the original video after taking a few frames from the clip and conducting a Google reverse image Search, the results showed that the video was published on Thackeray’s official Facebook account on February 19, 2023 in an entirely different context. The original video shows Thackeray referring to an Indian soldier who was killed by militants in Jammu and Kashmir in 2018. The same has been reported by TV9 Marathi here:
At the timestamp 1:47, Thackeray said in Marathi that reads when translated: “He (the deceased soldier) has sacrificed for the country. Now if I say that he was my brother, you will say, ‘But do you know the name?’ His name was Aurangzeb. He might have been a Muslim by religion. But he sacrificed for his country.”
It’s clear that Thackeray was referring to the soldier whose name was Aurangzeb and not the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb. Hence, the claim is false.
Claim: Aurangzeb was Uddhav Thackeray’s brother as per a video shared.
Conclusion: Misrepresentation. Thackeray was referring to the martyred soldier named Aurangzeb as his brother and not Mughal emperor Aurangzeb.
Rating: Misrepresentation — 
