Ahead of 2024 Lok Sabha elections, a video of Congress leader Rahul Gandhi from a recent rally by his party and Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) in Tamil Nadu is going viral to take a dig at the leader
What about the video?: The 16-second clip shows Gandhi saying, "And you like say I like dosas, come here and you tell the people of Tamil Nadu you like dosa. At the same time, you say you like dosa. You might like dosa, you might like vadas also...(unclear)."
An archive of the post can be found here.
(Source: X (formerly Twitter)/Screenshot)
When this report was written, the post had generated over a lakh views on the platform. Archives of similar claims can be viewed here and here.
What is the truth?: The video has been heavily edited to make it appear like Gandhi's speech was incoherent. In the original clip, Gandhi was heard targeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi for not caring about the culture and language of Tamil Nadu.
What led us to the truth?: We noticed that the viral video carried a watermark of "News18 Tamil Nadu."
The viral video had a watermark.
(Source: Viral video/Screenshot/Altered by The Quint)
Taking this as a cue, we looked through the official YouTube channel of News18 Tamil Nadu for Gandhi's video. We found the live stream of the Congress-DMK rally, where Gandhi was seen addressing the people gathered.
The video was live streamed on 12 April and its title when translated to English said, "LIVE: M.K.Stalin, Rahul Gandhi election campaign on the same platform in Coimbatore MK Stalin | Rahul."
At around the 46:11 timestamp, Gandhi could be heard saying, "You come here and you say I like dosas. And then you go back to Delhi, you say one nation, one leader, one language. Why one language? Why not space for Tamil, why not space for Bengali, why not space for Kannada, why not space for Manipuri."
Gandhi continued by saying, "So, you come here, you tell the people of Tamil Nadu you like dosa and then you insult them and you attack their culture, their history, their language."
"At the same time, you say you like dosa and Tamil farmers are starving, Tamil youth are unemployed. You destroyed small and medium industry by carrying out demonetisation and a flawed GST. For the first in Indian history, farmers are paying tax," he added.
"Modi ji, you might like dosas and you might like vadas also but that is not the issue here. Nobody cares whether you like dosa, you like vada. We care whether you like the Tamil language, we care whether you respect Tamil history, and we care about what you are doing for the future of this country and Tamil Nadu."Rahul Gandhi, Congress leader
Other sources: The official X handle of Congress party, too, shared a snippet from the Gandhi's entire speech where he could be seen targeting PM Modi.
Conclusion: It is clear that the video has been heavily edited to make it appear like Rahul Gandhi made an incoherent speech in Tamil Nadu.
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