A video (here, here, and here) has recently gone viral on social media claiming that the chief of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), Mohan Bhagwat, had remembered the contribution of the Congress party in the Indian freedom struggle during a speech. It is being claimed that he made these comments amidst the ongoing 2024 Lok Sabha elections. We fact-check this claim through this article.
Claim: Amidst the ongoing 2024 Lok Sabha elections, RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat said that the Congress party played a big role in the freedom movement.
Fact: This is an old video from 2018, not a recent one. Mohan Bhagwat made these comments during an RSS event held in New Delhi in September 2018. Hence, the claim made in the post is Misleading.
To check the veracity of the viral claim, we performed a keyword search on the internet to see if Mohan Bhagwat made any such comments on the Congress party recently, during the ongoing 2024 Lok Sabha elections. Through this search, we found that he did not make such comments during the ongoing Lok Sabha elections but made these statements during an event (here, here, and here) in 2018.
The Hindustan Times video report(archive link) that is doing the rounds on the internet claiming he praised the Congress party recently is actually from September 2018. During the inauguration ceremony of a three-day lecture event named “Future of Bharat: An RSS Perspective” held in New Delhi, he said that Congress played a big role in the freedom movement and gave Indians many great personalities.
You can see him making this statement here in his full address video uploaded on Sansad TV’s YouTube channel on 17 September 2018. Despite the date on which this was recorded, which is 17 September 2018, being clearly visible even in the viral video, it is being shared on social media as a recent video recorded after the 5th phase of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
To sum up, a five-year-old video from 2018 of Mohan Bhagwat praising the Congress party is now misleadingly shared as his recent remarks during the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
