As a controversy over his dangerous diatribe rages on, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has chosen to play victim and claimed that the opposition is abusing him only because he has exposed their politics of “appeasement”. 

Complaints are pouring in, but the Election Commission of India is yet to show signs that it will take strong action. And the line between fact and fiction has blurred, aided by the mainstream media’s failure to question Modi’s claims, and the supplementary “evidence” and edited clips circulated online by pro-BJP accounts.

But the fact is that most of what Modi said was far from the truth.

Be it his allegations about former PM Manmohan Singh – that he had said that Muslims had the first right to India’s resources – or the assertion about Congress’s plan to redistribute gold and silver to Muslims. Modi’s claims about the Muslim community giving birth to “more children”, and the insinuation that they are “infiltrators”, are also bizarre considering the data and the government’s own admissions.

The Modi government, in fact, has since 2014 told Parliament at least 16 times – by one count – that it didn’t even know the number of illegal immigrants in India.

In this video, watch Sreenivasan Jain fact-check what might turn out to be Modi’s most controversial speech this poll season.