A photograph, allegedly of a group of girls from Kerala wearing lungis to protest a ban on jeans imposed by in colleges, has been doing the rounds on social media since Sunday and has since gone viral. 

Here is the photo:

It had over 1000 shares on Facebook with personalities like celebrity hairstylist Sapna Bhavnani among those sharing it. It is also doing the rounds on Twitter. 

Many complimented the girls:

And some engaged in a war of words:

But wait…

Turns out the same image did the rounds when a Mahesh Babu film released in 2015. 

Chitramala

And some folks on Twitter are claiming that this is from even before that film came out and is of some Kerala students at a dance competition. 

So here are the facts as they stand: 

  • There’s no state-wide ban on jeans in Kerala colleges. 
  • The picture isn’t of a unique protest in a Kerala college (though it isn’t a bad idea to protest against a jeans ban if there ever was one) 
  • Even the 2015 report doing the rounds of an institute run by a Muslim organisation imposing such a ban was found to be false 

via GIPHY