The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) shared a clip showing Congress leader and Leader of the Opposition Rahul Gandhi moving around and shaking hands with people on the stage, while the national anthem is being heard playing in the background.
The claim:The clip is being shared to claim that “Rahul Gandhi has once again insulted the national anthem” by moving around while it was playing.
(Archived versions of more posts sharing this claim can be seen here, here, and here.)
Is it true?: The claim is misleading.
A longer version of the video shows that the anthem was accidentally played twice. When it was played for the first time, Gandhi remained still till it ended. He then shook hands with people around him when the national anthem began playing the second time.
How did we find out the truth?: We looked for videos of Gandhi holding an event on a stage on his official YouTube channel.
Here, we came across a livestream resembling the clip in the claim, which was shared on 13 August 2026.
It stated that Gandhi spoke during the Rachnatmak Congress National Convention at New Delhi’s Constitution Club.
We went through the video, and found that the clip shared in the viral claim was taken from the last few minutes of the livestream.
An hour into the video, the national anthem began playing and every person at the event stood up and stood still until it ended, before raising chants of ‘Bharat Mata ki Jai’.
After the anthem ended, Rahul Gandhi moved around to shake hands with the people he shared the stage with, when the recording of the national anthem began playing for the second time.
This part of the clip, which shows Gandhi moving when the recording started playing again, was shared to make the misleading claim about him disrespecting the national anthem.
Conclusion: A clipped video is being shared with the misleading claim that Rahul Gandhi disrespected the national anthem.
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