Old content can always be made to seem new
In the weeks surrounding the Ram Temple inauguration in Ayodhya, a video of a large bird hesitating before flight spread across social media dressed in the language of myth and spiritual renewal, claiming to show the release of Jatayu, the sacred bird of Hindu scripture. Fact-checkers traced the footage to Argentina, identified the creature as a Griffon Vulture, and found the clip had already circulated online as far back as 2022. The incident is a quiet lesson in how meaning is not always fabricated from nothing — sometimes it is simply borrowed from elsewhere and placed, with care, into a moment hungry for signs.
- A years-old video of a Griffon Vulture in Argentina was repackaged with spiritual captions and Ram Temple tags, spreading rapidly across Instagram and Facebook in the days before a major national religious event.
- The emotional framing — a bird forgetting how to fly, captivity breaking the spirit, faith restoring power — made the video feel like a message, not a clip, and thousands shared it as though it were sacred news from Ayodhya.
- Fact-checkers at India TV broke the chain by extracting frames, running reverse image searches, and cross-referencing a DNA Hindi article from June 2022 that had already featured the same footage without any mythological claim.
- A YouTube channel's September 2023 upload confirmed the bird's true identity and origin, exposing the posts as recontextualization rather than outright fabrication — real footage, false meaning.
- The Ram Temple inauguration has become a magnet for similar misinformation, with old clips and misidentified imagery circulating widely through networks primed to receive them as confirmation of something larger unfolding.
A video spreading across Instagram and Facebook in recent weeks carried an emotionally charged claim: that Jatayu, the mythological bird of Hindu scripture, had been released into the sky as part of the sacred preparations in Ayodhya ahead of the Ram Temple inauguration. The captions wove spiritual messages about captivity, lost confidence, and the rediscovery of flight. For many viewers, the timing felt deliberate — another sign of something larger unfolding.
But when fact-checkers at India TV ran reverse image searches on frames extracted from the footage, they found the video had been circulating since at least June 2022, when a DNA Hindi article featured the same clip — describing only a large bird that had forgotten how to fly after years in captivity, with no mention of Jatayu or Ayodhya. The footage had been waiting, dormant, for a moment worth borrowing.
The bird's true identity was confirmed by a YouTube channel that uploaded the same footage in September 2023, identifying it as a Griffon Vulture — a massive raptor native to parts of Europe, Asia, and Africa, with a wingspan of eight feet. The incident had not taken place in India at all. Further tracing pointed to Argentina as the location where the footage was originally shot.
What the case reveals is the particular mechanics of modern misinformation: not fabrication, but recontextualization. The video is real. The bird is real. The moment of hesitation before flight is real. What is false is the identity assigned to the bird, the country assigned to the event, and the year assigned to the moment. Attached to a nationally significant religious ceremony, a years-old clip became apparent breaking news from Ayodhya.
The Ram Temple inauguration has drawn dozens of such false claims in the weeks surrounding the ceremony — old footage repackaged, animals misidentified as sacred symbols, images stripped of their original context and dressed in new meaning. The fact-checking work that dismantles them is methodical and unglamorous. But without it, a Griffon Vulture from Argentina becomes Jatayu in Ayodhya, and a bird learning to fly again becomes a sign from the gods.
A video has been circulating across Instagram and Facebook in recent weeks, tagged with references to Ayodhya and the Ram Temple inauguration, claiming to show the release of Jatayu—the mythological bird from Hindu scripture—into the sky. The posts carried emotional captions about a creature freed from captivity, finally remembering how to fly, with spiritual messages woven through them about regaining one's strength and self-confidence. For many who encountered these videos in their feeds, the timing seemed deliberate: another sign of the sacred preparations underway in Ayodhya.
But the video is not what it claims to be. When fact-checkers at India TV extracted frames from the footage and reverse-searched them, they discovered the story had a much older origin. A DNA Hindi article from June 2022—nearly two years before the Ram Temple inauguration—had already circulated the same video, describing it simply as a large bird that had forgotten how to fly after years in captivity. The article made no mention of Jatayu or Ayodhya. The video, it turned out, had been floating through the internet for years, waiting to be repurposed.
The deeper investigation revealed the bird's true identity. A YouTube channel called Shipa Cat had uploaded the footage in September 2023, identifying it as a Griffon Vulture—a massive raptor with a wingspan of eight feet, native to parts of Europe, Asia, and Africa. This was not a mythological bird at all, but a real animal, and the incident had not occurred in India. Further tracing pointed to Argentina as the actual location where the footage was shot.
What makes this case instructive is how the video was weaponized through social media. The Instagram user who posted it, akash_pataal_, paired the footage with a simple caption: "I forgot to fly." The Facebook version, shared by another user named Dinesh khilery mandla on January 5, added layers of meaning—a lengthy meditation on how captivity destroys confidence, how we become slaves to the opinions of others, how we lose our power when we lose faith in ourselves. The spiritual resonance was unmistakable. For viewers already primed by the tags and the timing, the video felt like a sign.
This is the mechanics of modern misinformation: not outright fabrication, but recontextualization. The video itself is real. The bird is real. The moment of hesitation before flight is real. What is false is the claim about what bird it is, where it is, and when it happened. By attaching it to a moment of national religious significance, the posts transformed a years-old clip into something that appeared to be breaking news from Ayodhya.
The Ram Temple inauguration has drawn dozens of similar false claims and doctored videos in the weeks leading up to the ceremony. Some have shown old footage repackaged as recent events. Others have featured animals or objects misidentified as sacred symbols. Each one spreads quickly through networks of people eager to share what feels like confirmation of something larger happening. The fact-checking work is methodical and unglamorous—reverse image searches, cross-referencing dates, tracing videos back to their original sources—but it is essential. Without it, the Griffon Vulture from Argentina becomes Jatayu in Ayodhya, and a bird learning to fly again becomes a sign from the gods.
Citações Notáveis
When freed from the cage, the bird had forgotten to fly, its wings kept flapping— DNA Hindi article from June 2022
A Conversa do Hearth Outra perspectiva sobre a história
Why does a video like this spread so easily? It's just a bird.
Because it arrives at exactly the right moment, tagged with the right place, and it tells a story people want to believe. The timing makes it feel like news. The tags make it feel like evidence.
But someone had to know it wasn't actually from Ayodhya when they posted it.
Maybe. Or maybe they found it, saw the spiritual message in it, and thought it belonged to the moment. The line between sharing and misleading can blur when you're caught up in something.
How far back does this video actually go?
At least to 2022, possibly earlier. It's been traveling through the internet for years, waiting to be reframed. That's what makes it dangerous—old content can always be made to seem new.
So the bird itself is real. The moment is real.
Completely real. A Griffon Vulture in Argentina, genuinely hesitant to fly. But the context is invented. That's the sleight of hand.
What does it say about how we consume information now?
That we're all curators without knowing it. We see something that resonates, we share it, and we've become part of the machinery that spreads it. Verification takes work. Sharing takes one click.
Will people who saw the original posts ever know the truth?
Some will. Others won't. That's the gap that fact-checking tries to close, but it's always playing catch-up.