A digitally altered video of Rahul Gandhi’s speech is shared with a misleading claim that he spoke about Dosas in the election campaign - FACTLY
Sai Krishna Muthyanolla
April 18, 2024
A video clip is making its rounds on the internet in which Congress leader Rahul Gandhi appears to be discussing Dosas during his election campaign. This video is being shared alongside a caption stating, “When you bring a buffoon like Rahul Gandhi to an election campaign, this is what you will get to hear.” We will fact-check this claim through this article.
Claim: Rahul Gandhi’s incoherent speech about dosas during his election campaign meeting.
Fact: The viral video is actually a heavily edited version of a speech he gave in Coimbatore during an election campaign. In the full speech, Rahul Gandhi used ‘Dosa’ and ‘Vada’ as analogies to express his objection towards the central government’s alleged proposed one nation, one language policy. Therefore, the claim made in the post is Misleading.
We began our fact-checking process with a keyword search for the full video of Rahul Gandhi’s speech in which he mentioned ‘dosa’. This led us to the complete speech on his official YouTube channel (also here).
After examining the entire speech, it is clear that the viral clip had been significantly manipulated. The editing with a lot of jump cuts was done to give the impression that Rahul Gandhi was incoherently discussing ‘Dosa’ and ‘Vada’ during an election campaign meeting.
Upon viewing the speech, it was noted that from approximately 47:02 to 48:50, he spoke the lines that can be seen in the viral video. These lines include: “and you say I like dosas,” “You come here, you tell the people of Tamil Nadu you like dosa,” “at the same time you say you like dosa,” and “You might like dosa, you might like vada’s also.” You can also see this portion here in a Facebook video posted by the official Indian National Congress page.
However, these lines were taken out of context. Only fragments of the sentences were kept in the viral video, while the context in which the words ‘dosa’ and ‘vada’ were used was left out. In reality, Rahul Gandhi stated the following while posing a few questions to PM Modi, Adani and RSS. He said: “You come here and you say I like dosas, and then you go back to Delhi and you say one nation, 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?” “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.” “Modiji you might like Dosa, you might like vada’s 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.”
It can be concluded from these statements that Rahul Gandhi was referring to the alleged ‘One Nation, One Language, One Leader’ remarks of Modi and RSS. He was not merely talking about dosas, he used them as an example to illustrate how people claim to like dosas and then advocate for a ‘One Nation, One Language, One Leader’ policy.
To sum up, the claim that Rahul Gandhi was talking about dosas during his election campaign speech is misleading. The viral video is a heavily edited version of his original speech at an election campaign in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu.