No, Rahul Gandhi Did Not Say He Had a Direct Conversation With Mahatma Gandhi

The video in which Rahul Gandhi talks about Nehru's letter was uploaded on INC's Twitter handle in February.

The claim suggests that Rahul Gandhi said that he had a direct conversation with Mahatma Gandhi.

(Photo: Altered by The Quint)

A trimmed video with the claim that it shows Congress leader Rahul Gandhi talking about having a direct conversation with Mahatma Gandhi is being shared on social media. In the video, the Congress leader can be heard saying that while he disagreed on a matter with Gandhi, he knew that the latter was right.

Several users have shared the post, taking a dig at the Congress leader and mentioning the impossibility of any such conversation. The users have also criticised the party for projecting him as the next prime ministerial candidate.

However, we found that this video is trimmed. A longer video shows Rahul Gandhi referring to a letter written by former PM Jawaharlal Nehru on his disagreement with Mahatma Gandhi regarding a certain matter. The video is from Dwarka and the same was uploaded on Congress' Twitter handle on 26 February 2022.

CLAIM

The claim suggests that Rahul Gandhi said that he had a direct conversation with Mahatma Gandhi and that even though he disagreed with the Mahatma, he still knew that the latter was right.

The video was uploaded along with a caption in Hindi which said, "इस व्यक्ति ने गाँधी जी से डायरेक्ट बात की है! और ये कांग्रेसी इसे प्रधानमंत्री के रूप में देखना चाहते हैं?"

(Translation: This person has had a direct conversation with Gandhi ji. This is the leader which the Congress party wants to see as the next PM?)

An archive of the post can be seen here

(Source: Twitter/Screenshot)

A similar archived post can be found here.

WHAT WE FOUND OUT

We fragmented the video into several key frames using Google Chrome extension InVID and performed a reverse image search, supplementing it with Hindi keywords like "गाँधी जी गलत बोल रहे है और मैं सही " (Translation: Gandhi ji is wrong and I am right).

This led us to a video which was uploaded on the official Twitter handle of the Congress party on 26 February 2022. In the video, Rahul Gandhi can be seen referring to a letter written by his great-grandfather Jawaharlal Nehru about Mahatma Gandhi.

He spoke about Nehru's letter and said, "In his letter Nehru ji wrote – Gandhi ji and I discussed on a particular matter. My mind, my logical thinking tells me that Gandhi ji is wrong and I am right. However, I know deep inside that he is right and I am wrong."

This clearly proves that Rahul Gandhi was referring to a letter written by his great-grandfather and not a conversation that he had with Gandhi as claimed in the viral post.

We also found that the first 26 seconds of the video uploaded by the Congress party was missing in the video that is now being shared. The 42-second long clipped video shows Rahul Gandhi saying that he disagreed with Mahatma Gandhi in a conversation that they had.

Whereas, the longer video clearly shows him referring to a letter written by the former Prime Minister Nehru about Gandhi. While a part of the speech is present in the clipped video, the larger context where Rahul Gandhi mentions the former PM is missing.

Evidently, a trimmed video is being shared on social media platforms with false claims suggesting that Rahul Gandhi talked about having a direct conversation with Mahatma Gandhi.

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