An image of late Prime Minister Indira Gandhi burying a metal capsule has gone viral on social media. The image is being shared with a caption asking the government to dig out the ‘time capsule’ and make the contents public. The post claims those documents must be excavated by the current government since they hold secret information about the Congress regime.
The caption associated with the image read: “इस घटना की याद सायद ही किसी को होगी। 15 अगस्त 1973 को लाल किले के सामने कुए में भारी भरकम ताँबे और स्टील के कैप्सूल में इंदिरा ने कुछ महत्वपूर्ण पब्लिक दस्तावेज गाड़े थे हिन्दुओ मोदीजी से मांग करो इस स्थल को खोदवाकर दस्तावेज को सार्वजनिक कराये ताकि पता लगे इसमे क्या इतिहास छिपा है ?”
(English translation, “People will hardly remember this incident. Heavy metal capsule having some important public documents was burried inside a well in front of Red Fort on August 15, 1973. Hindus ask Modiji to dig this place and make the document public so that we come to know what history is hidden inside it.”)
The link to the post can be seen here.
FACT CHECK
NewsMobile did a fact-check and found the claim to be misleading.
On searching on Google with relevant keywords, we found a report dated December 2, 1977, published in The Washington Post. The report stated that “a parliamentary committee was established to supervise the exhumation, open the capsule, and reveal what lies inside. The assumption here is that then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi buried the device; it was packed with laudatory paper about her family and little else. The report further said that the then member of Parliament from the Punjab, Dutt Sharma – who was also a member of the then ruling Peoples Party but formerly a leader of the Hindu nationalist party the Jan Sangh – was the chairman of the Parliamentary Committee for Examination of Time Capsules.”
News 18 also reported that on August 15, 1973, Indira Gandhi buried a metal capsule, known as Kaalapatra, in front of Red Fort.
The capsule was said to have documentation of the first 25 years of the country and was expected to be excavated after 1000 years so that people would get a closer glimpse of the history of India. However, the project received heavy backlash as people believed that it misrepresented historical facts.
However, later in 1977, the Janata Party came to power under the leadership of Morarji Desai and excavated the capsule. A few veteran journalists claimed that the capsule’s content had details about Indira Gandhi’s accomplishments and her father Jawaharlal Nehru. However, not many details are available about what was in it.
Thus, we can ascertain that the time capsule has been excavated in 1977, unlike the viral claim which says it is yet to be excavated. Thus, the viral claim is misleading.
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