Morphed image shared to falsely claim Burj Khalifa was lit up with Ram’s image on Ram Navami

By: Chandan Borgohain
April 4 2023

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Context

On March 30, the Ram Navami festival, which celebrates the birth of the Hindu god Ram, was observed across different parts of India. Similar to the last few years, celebrations this year were preceded and succeeded by scattered incidents of communal violence from many parts of the country. Reports by The Wire and news agency PTI stated that incidents of stone pelting and arson caused communal tension around the celebration in states like Maharashtra, West Bengal, Bihar, and Gujarat. The outbreak of violence has led to deaths and injuries, and prohibitory orders have also been imposed in several pockets. In addition, several unverified photos and videos are circulating on different social media platforms.

One such viral photo shows an image of Ram being projected on Dubai's Burj Khalifa skyscraper. Those sharing the image claimed that the world's tallest building was adorned with the image of the Hindu deity on the occasion of Ram Navami. Sharing the image on the Indian microblogging platform Koo, a user wrote, "The strength of #New_india_🇮🇳 #RAM_NAVAMI Celebration in Burj Khalifa." The image can also be seen circulating on Twitter and Facebook with similar claims. 

However, the viral image is digitally manipulated. 

In Fact

This year the Ram Navami festival was celebrated on March 30 in India. We checked the verified social media handles of Burj Khalifa and found that it did not post any such photo or video recently. The Burj Khalifa website doesn't have any such photo as well. A wider web search also did not elicit any credible results.

However, a reverse image search on Google led us to a very similar image on the stock photo sites iStock and Adobe Stock. The photo was uploaded on iStock on February 3, 2016, with the caption, "Dubai, UAE - December 28, 2015: Night view of Burj Khalifa tower. Burj Khalifa is the tallest structure in the world (828 m)." Both images, taken from the same angle, clearly match each other when looking at the Burj Khalifa its surrounding buildings. The original photo, however, doesn't show any projection of the Hindu god Ram on the building. This proves that the viral image is an edited one.

The Verdict

There is no credible source that shows an image of the Hindu deity Ram was projected on Dubai's Burj Khalifa. The viral image is a digitally altered version of an old photo of the building to falsely claim that the Burj Khalifa was lit up on the occasion of Ram Navami. Therefore, we have marked this claim false.