As the Lok Sabha elections approach, several Congress leaders are leaving the grand old party. There is speculation that Congress leader Navjot Singh Sidhu will also leave the Congress party. In the midst of this, multiple posts (here, here, and here), accompanied by a video of Navjot Sidhu mocking Rahul Gandhi with the statement, “Hey Rahul Baba, go to school and learn to read. Learn the difference between nationalism and treason,” are widely circulating across social media platforms, claiming that Sidhu made these remarks recently before leaving the Congress party. In this article, let’s fact-check the claims made in the posts.
Claim: Video depicting Navjot Singh Sidhu mocking Rahul Gandhi by saying, ‘Hey Rahul Baba, go to school and learn to read. Learn the difference between nationalism and treason’.
Fact: This viral video of Navjot Singh Sidhu criticizing Rahul Gandhi dates back to 2010. At that time, Navjot Singh Sidhu was not associated with the Congress party; he was a BJP MP. Sidhu made these statements while addressing a public meeting at Khokhara, Gujarat in October 2010. During this event, Sidhu asked Rahul Gandhi to go to school to learn the difference between nationalism and treason after Gandhi equated Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) with the banned Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) during the Municipal Corporation elections campaign in Gujarat. Hence, the claim made in the post is MISLEADING.
Upon careful observation of the viral video, we noticed that it carries the ‘India TV logo’. Taking this as a clue, we conducted a relevant keyword search on the internet. This search led us to a video uploaded on YouTube by ‘India TV’ on 08 October 2010. The video is titled “RSS Remark: Sidhu Asks Rahul To Go To School.” In the entire 41-second video, the viral segment starts at the 0:22 second time stamp.
According to the description of this video, Navjot Singh Sidhu, a cricketer-turned-politician who was a BJP MP at the time, had gone to Khokhra, Gujarat, to campaign for the Municipal Corporation elections. While addressing a public election meeting at Khokhara on the evening of 06 October 2010, Sidhu had asked Rahul Gandhi to go to school to learn the difference between nationalism and treason after Gandhi equated Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) with the banned Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) during the Municipal Corporation elections campaign in Gujarat. We also found a news report from ‘The Indian Express’ from 2010, which stated that Sidhu had called Rahul Gandhi a child and asked him to go to school over his remarks, calling RSS a fanatic group and comparing it with SIMI. According to reports (here & here), Sidhu left the BJP and joined the Congress party in 2017. From this information, it becomes clear that the viral video of Navjot Singh Sidhu criticizing Rahul Gandhi dates back to 2010 when he was a BJP MP.
To sum it up, an old video of Navjot Singh Sidhu criticizing Rahul Gandhi over nationalism is being shared as a recent one.
