An old clip of Rahul Gandhi is viral online with the claim that he made a bizarre speech about his father's death and the Dalit community. BOOM found that the speech has been clipped and shared out of context; the full video shows Gandhi speaking about Dalit atrocities.
In the 3-minute clip, Gandhi is narrating the story of his conversation with a man and saying, "My father was killed, and I did not do it (kill for revenge). I harbour no hatred for my father's killers in my heart. But when I was in the hospital, I thought if this were to happen to me, I would have killed. So I asked the man, can you look at the newspaper and find the name of the person who killed? He said yes." Gandhi then talks about how he asked him some more questions relating to whether he had the means to kill and the man answered in the affirmative to them all, but said he still couldn't kill because he was a Dalit.
This video is being shared on Facebook with the caption, "You have to understand this speech in 7 days. it’s a challenge and your time starts now."
Click here to view the post and here for an archive.
The video was shared with a similar caption on X (formerly Twitter).
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FACT CHECK
BOOM found that the clip is old and has been shared out of context. In the full speech, Gandhi is speaking about Dalit atrocities by giving the example of the 2016 incident from Una where a Dalit family was flogged by upper-caste individuals.
We ran a keyword search on Google using "Rahul Gandhi Dalit speech" and found a YouTube video shared by the official account of the Indian National Congress on April 9, 2022. The title and description detailed how Gandhi was speaking at the book launch of 'The Dalit Truth' at Jawahar Bhawan in New Delhi.
The visuals of Gandhi in the YouTube video and the viral video were an exact match. Below is a comparison of the same:
While speaking at the book launch about Dalit atrocities in India, Gandhi gave the example of an incident in Una, Gujarat, wherein seven members of a Dalit family were beaten up and paraded by cow vigilantes in July 2016 for allegedly skinning a cow carcass. The flogging led to widespread protests across Gujarat where Dalit groups demanded declaring Gau Rakshaks as illegal. 18 Dalit youths in different parts of the state even attempted to die by suicide to protest the flogging.
Amid this, AAP leader Arvind Kejriwal and Congress leader Rahul Gandhi were among the politicians who visited Una and met the victims' family.
The portion of the viral video begins from 24:13 in the original YouTube video where Gandhi is heard recounting this incident in his speech and how he met some of the youths that had attempted suicide.
He describes the meeting and talks about how the enraged youths found out about the incident and took this step. "If somebody would have flogged my sister in such a manner, I would knife them before attempting suicide," Gandhi says in his speech. Here, he tries to explain how out of helplessness, the Dalit youths decided to die by suicide as a form of protest, whereas an upper caste individual such as himself would have first considered taking revenge by killing their perpetrator. "This person is carrying the burden of lakhs and thousands of Dalit lives on their shoulder," Gandhi adds while speaking about the Dalit youths.
In his speech, Gandhi also talks about how the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) is controlling the Enforcement Directorate (ED) and the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), along with other institutions that are responsible for enforcing the constitution. "Without institution, the constitution holds no meaning," he says.