A 19-second video of Congress leader Rahul Gandhi is going viral on social media. In the video, he purportedly can be heard saying, “I did my post-graduation from kindergarten.” The video is shared with a caption that reads, “He has the mind of a child to say I did post-graduation when I was a child.” (Translated from Hindi)
SouthCheck found that the claim was false. The video was clipped to remove the context of Rahul Gandhi’s speech.
We noticed the poster on the mic stand that read, ‘Samvidhan Samman Samvelan.’
Taking this as a clue, we searched using relevant keywords on YouTube and found that the same video was uploaded to the official YouTube channel of Rahul Gandhi. The caption read: ‘Samvidhan Samman Sammelan | Kolhapur, Maharashtra.’
At around the 28:28-minute mark, Rahul Gandhi can be seen making the viral statement and the rest of the sentence. He said “I was recently thinking about my childhood education, when I studied from kindergarten to post-graduation… while I studied graduation and post-graduation from abroad, my school education was in India. I asked myself how many books or chapters I read on untouchability and Dalits.”
The event was also reported live by HW News English. The event called Samvidhan Samman Sammelan was held on October 5, 2024.
According to a Times of India article, Samvidhan Samman Sammelan was an event aimed to raise awareness of the need to save and respect the Constitution. The first event was held in the last week of August in Prayagraj in Uttar Pradesh. Gandhi attended the event at Kolhapur in Maharashtra.
We found that the Hindustan Times had also reported on the incident. The report quoted Rahul Gandhi, who said that based on his own experience, he can say that the history of Dalits and those belonging to the Backward Classes was not taught in schools.
Hence, we can conclude that a clip of Rahul Gandhi is being shared out of context.