A screenshot of a tweet purportedly made by Congress leader Rahul Gandhi is being shared on social media claiming that the tweet resembles Rahul Gandhi’s lack of knowledge about Hindu holy texts Mahabharata and Ramayana. This purported tweet of Rahul Gandhi stated Lord Ram, instead of Krishna, as the guide for Arjuna and mentions Yudhishter, Laxman, Arjun, Ganesh and Shatrughan Sinha as the five Pandavas who killed Ravana. Also, this purported tweet of Rahul Gandhi compared the Congress party with Pandavas and BJP leaders with Kauravas. Let’s verify the claim made in the post.
Claim: Rahul Gandhi tweet on Mahabharata characters.
Fact: The tweet shared in the post is a morphed one. Rahul Gandhi did not make any such tweet on his Twitter handle. Rahul Gandhi did compare Congress party leaders with Pandavas and BJP leaders with Kauravas in 2018. But he never made the comments as alleged in the tweet. Hence, the claim made in the post is FALSE.
On observing the tweet carefully, we could see the purported tweet was made on 19 March 2018. When we searched to check whether Rahul Gandhi had made any such tweet on 19 March 2018 using the Twitter Advanced search, we could not find any on his official Twitter handle. If Rahul Gandhi had made any such tweet, several news websites would have published articles reporting this information. But we could not find a single news article reporting this information.
On comparing a normal tweet made from Rahul Gandhi’s official Twitter handle with that of the tweet in the screenshot, we could observe multiple differences in both these tweets. The tweet shared in the post had no blue tick mark unlike the official Twitter handle of Rahul Gandhi. Also, the purported tweet shared in the post did not display the device name from which the tweet was made. A normal tweet made by any Twitter user generally displays the device name from which they are tweeting.
In 2018, during the Congress Plenary and the Karnataka election meetings, Rahul Gandhi’s address compared the Congress party with Pandavas and BJP leaders with Kauravas in Mahabharatha. But Rahul Gandhi had never made comments as alleged in the tweet screenshot.
To sum it up, the image of a purported tweet of Rahul Gandhi about Mahabharata is a morphed one.
