Fact Check: 2014 'Kiss of Love' video VIRAL amid Jadavpur University protests

A clash broke out at Kolkata’s Jadavpur University between members of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad and the Left students’ union during a late-night Faculty of Engineering and Technology Students’ Union meeting on August 20. The confrontation escalated into stone-pelting and property destruction. Protests from both sides followed the violence.A video of men and women kissing amid a public protest has now gone viral. “Left student wing protest going on at Jadavpur University,” claimed people sharing the video.India Today Fact Check found that the video is from 2014, and therefore unrelated to recent incidents at Jadavpur University. OUR PROBEReverse-searching frames from the viral video led us to the YouTube channel of Zee News Bangla. Dated November 5, 2014, this video featured similar visuals. It also featured several people seen in the viral clip. This made it clear that the video has nothing to do with the recent protests at the university. The Zee News Bangla caption noted that it was from the “Kiss Protest” in Jadavpur, Kolkata. A subsequent search led us to news reports from November 8, 2014, noting that this was part of the “Kiss Of Love” protest that began in Kochi against alleged moral policing by Bharatiya Janata Party youth wing workers in Kozhikode.The movement began on November 2, 2014, at Marine Drive in Kochi, where participants protested moral policing by publicly expressing affection through hugs and kisses. Despite a crackdown in Kochi, the campaign soon became a national talking point. It subsequently spread to several parts of the country, with students and activists at institutions such as Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi and Jadavpur University in Kolkata also joining the movement.Reports from The Times of India and The Indian Express from 2014 noted that similar acts were also carried out at other locations in the city, including the historic Indian Coffee House on College Street, in front of Presidency University.A similar video from Jadavpur University from 2014 also went viral in July this year during the Cockroach Janata Party protest at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar. India Today fact-checked the video at the time.Thus, it’s clear that the viral claim is misleading.- EndsPublished By: Pathikrit SanyalPublished On: Aug 24, 2026 18:07 IST