How a 2014 JNU ‘Kiss of Love’ Video Was Repackaged to Target the CJP Protest 

As the CJP protest enters its fourth week, old and unrelated videos continue to be repurposed to spread misleading narratives. This viral clip predates the protest by more than a decade. 

The Cockroach Janta Party’s (CJP) protest at Jantar Mantar, demanding the resignation of Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan, has crossed 24 days. Climate activist Sonam Wangchuk’s health continues to remain critical as he persists with his indefinite hunger strike. The party has now announced a Parliament march on July 20.

Since the beginning of the protest, a flurry of false claims, manufactured narratives, and misleading visuals have been used by right-wing social media users to discredit the movement. We had earlier fact-checked such a misleading claim that falsely alleged Arundhati Roy made a statement about Kashmir at the protest site.

This time, another video is making the rounds across X and Facebook. The video shows a man and a woman kissing amid a cheering crowd at night. The captions accompanying the posts claim that the incident took place at the CJP protest site and frame it as evidence that ‘immoral acts’ are being carried out in the name of the protest. We checked and traced back the video to a different incident that took place more than a decade ago. 

What is the viral claim?

On July 3, a Facebook user named Unni Krishnan posted this video showing a group of students sitting in a circle. A young woman is standing in the middle of the crowd, and amid cheers from those around her, a man gets up, hugs her, and kisses her. The post is captioned in Malayalam: “They may act calm during the day, but it’s only at night that the Cockroach protest really heats up”.

As of July 13, the video had garnered 759 likes and 295 shares on Facebook. The comment section is filled with vulgar and derogatory remarks. One user commented that “they are filling the protest with prostitutes to make it a success”, while another asked whether the protest had turned into a “Kiss of Love” protest.

The video has also spread across several accounts on X. A user named @SonofBharat7 shared the clip with a Hindi caption that translates to: “At 2 AM at Jantar Mantar, the Cockroach protest reaches its peak. This protest won’t stop… It will keep going like this… It will only grow.”

As of July 13, the post had amassed more than 3 lakh views, 5,600 likes, and 2,800 reposts. Similar to the Facebook post mentioned earlier, the comment section is filled with vulgar and derogatory remarks, with several users portraying the video as evidence of “immoral” activities allegedly taking place at the protest site.

What are the facts?

A reverse image search using keyframes from the viral video led us to a video uploaded by a YouTube channel called Minok Media. Titled ‘JNU Students Kissing Party’, the video was uploaded on November 19, 2019. Its description states that the participants were “randomly kissing one another.”

This establishes that the video is not from the CJP protest, but is an older video from an unrelated event.

Using this as a cue, we ran a keyword search for ‘JNU’ and ‘students kissing’. We found several videos of the same event, along with multiple news reports.

The oldest version we found was uploaded on November 12, 2014, with the caption ‘Kiss of Love’ festival at JNU.

According to a report published by The Times of India on November 10, 2014, the Kiss of Love campaign was held at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), where more than 200 students gathered at Ganga Dhaba to protest against moral policing. The report noted that there was no disruption by right-wing groups during the event, nor was any police presence reported.

The Kiss of Love movement began in 2014 as a protest against moral policing. It was initiated through a Facebook campaign in response to the vandalism of a café in Kozhikode, Kerala, following allegations of public display of affection.

Therefore, the viral claim is false. The video being circulated as footage from the ongoing CJP protest is actually from the 2014 Kiss of Love campaign at Jawaharlal Nehru University. It predates the protest by more than a decade. Old and unrelated visuals have once again been repurposed to portray the CJP protest in a negative light. This is another instance of misleading content being used to discredit the movement through manufactured narratives.