A columnist named Gopal Goswami who calls himself a Sanatani Hindu has recently come under our radar of investigation for spreading massive hatred against Muslims and fake news by sharing slanderous posts and tweets on Twitter.

He has launched a scathing attack on the Muslim community in the recent past by disguising himself under the mask of a PHD NITien and a Sanatani Hindu. In this Dfrac Exclusive report, we will expose him by analysing his tweets and retweets, which have harmed the religious and social sensibilities of the Muslim community on the Internet.

The report will cover: 

• Who is Gopal Goswami?
• Using online medium to spread misleading content
• Technique of attacking Muslim Community
•  Conclusion

Who is Gopal Goswami?

According to Twitter’s bio, Gopal Goswani is an ideator of the Surat Literary Foundation (NPO) in Surat. He is a prominent columnist who identifies himself as a Sanatani Hindu and who has a highly educational background. His extreme right-wing outlook and approach are highly conspicuous in his recent posts and tweets on Twitter. Not only this, he has been frequently observed condemning the Muslim community on Twitter. He has 31k followers on his Twitter account which demonstrates that he is a highly influential online personality on Twitter.

Using online mediums to spread misleading content

Gopal Goswami, our prominent icon has been using online mediums such as Twitter since 2009. We have discovered numerous false tweets and posts on his official Twitter account.

Misleading Claim No. 1

He posted a picture on his Twitter account, showing some women carrying clay pots on their heads with the caption: “Kalash Yatra by Hindu women on the day of Devshayani Ekadashi, Bali province in Indonesia, How well they are saving our ancient culture”.

Fact-Check

To verify the picture, the Dfrac team reverse-searched it on Google. We found the same picture on a Travel guide website named bali villa finder. According to this website, the picture shows how Balinese men and women celebrate their special day ‘Galungan’.

Fact-Check Link

Misleading Claim No. 2

He posted a video on Twitter, showing several cars falling on the ground and getting blasted simultaneously from a high building and wrote, “France elects a secular liberal Macron as President leaving a nationalist woman behind, see the result.”

Fact-Check

To verify the authenticity of the viral video, the DFRAC team converted this video into some key frames and then reverse-searched on Google. We found some media reports during this process.

According to a report published by the Spanish website depor.com on October 22, 2022 – this video clip was uploaded by the Tiktok account ‘NTWRK’, which within a few hours became the most viewed and commented video among users of this social network. In this report, depor.com revealed:  this video clip has been viewed more than 30,000 times in a few hours and it will be a ‘behind the scenes scene’ of the film ‘Fast and Furious 9’, in which cars and action will be surprising. There will be production”.

Moreover, news was also published on the website mirror.co of England in the context of the viral video. It has been mentioned in the news that the Fast and Furious crew has filmed one of its most explosive scenes so far,  continuing to work on the new film.

Fact-Check Link

Misleading Claim No. 3

  In addition to that, he shared a video of an old man getting married to a girl on Twitter, and wrote: ““Father’s father i.e. Grandfather got Halala done. The grandfather turned out to be a rogue and refused to return the grandson’s wife. The wife also tasted the pleasure and the wife herself became a grandmother. Many shades of Religion, and that’s why no one leaves religion easily”. 

Fact-Check 

To verify the claim of the viral video posted by him, the team of Dfrac converted this video into some keyframes and then reverse-searched these keyframes on Google. During this process, we found this video was posted 7 months ago from a YouTube Channel in Bangladesh and the video was 9:30 minutes long.

It was clearly mentioned in the video’s description that the video was created for entertainment purposes only. Several entertainment videos can also be seen on this channel.

Fact-Check Link

The technique of Attacking Muslim Community

Gopal Goswami consistently shares offensive and scathing content against Muslims.  To target the entire Muslim community, he decorated his Twitter account with negative content related to Muslims. From Rape to forceful conversion, he has included everything to defame and disgrace the Muslims. 

We have classified his negative content into two sections :

• Underscoring the issue of Jihad

• Sharing Trolling posts in order to attack Islamic religion.

• Underscoring the issue of Love Jihad: In his Timeline, we discovered that he relishes highlighting the issue of jihad.

In this tweet, he has shared an exemplary post stating the fact that some Muslim women liberated themselves from ‘Halala’ and ‘Teen Talak’ by marrying Hindu men. Not only this, but he also cited   the fact claiming thousands of Hindu women burnt in the fire of love Jihad, he is simply flagging the issue of love jihad and trying to associated it with Islamic religion  in order to attack Muslims on the Internet.

In this tweet, he wrote: ”A Muslim girl marries a Hindu boy knowing that he is a Hindu. Muslim boys cheat by calling themselves Hindu, that is love jihad. Whatever this Maulana is saying, it would be correct if we take it in the context of Love Jihad”. Using Maulana as a weapon in this tweet, he is trying to promulgate the Conspiracy theory of Love Jihad, given by the proponents of Hindutva ideology. It leads to reinstate the antipathy towards Muslim community on social media platforms.

• Sharing Trolling posts in order to attack Islamic Religion: He is severely criticizing Islam by spreading trolling tweets on Twitter.

Conclusion

In this Dfrac report, we have presented a deep analysis to unmask  Gopal Goswami who is disseminating  loathsome and misleading content on social media platforms. He has been observed disreputing the Muslim community while pretending to be a Sanatani Hindu on the Internet. Not only this, but he has also been discovered playing a significant role in polarizing and dividing the society along religious and communal lines.