Did Rahul Gandhi say Congress is a Muslim Party?
Claim
Rahu| Gyaandh! (Rahul Gandhi Unwired) now SAYS THAT CONGRESS IS A MUSLIM PARTY! CONGRESS IS A PARTYYY FOR MUSLIMS !!! Rahul G has finally HAD “THE” REVELATION !!!
Rating
Explanation
BJP members are spreading a video on social media with the claim that Rahul Gandhi has declared the Congress party a Muslim party. The news video shows a piece of news published in an Urdu newspaper. Some of the posts with such a claim can be seen here and here.
https://twitter.com/rknaidu40052938/status/1658407709279150080?s=46&t=kIszbQH_arRSG8kPbuGeZw
What is the truth?
When searching for the news of Rahul Gandhi‘s declaration of the Congress party as a Muslim party, it is found that the posts about the Urdu newspaper, which is shown in the viral video, have been circulating since 2018. On July 13, 2018, Union Minister Nirmala Sitharaman spoke about this in a press conference.
The President of Congress Party, Mr. Rahul Gandhi has said that Congress is a Muslim party : Smt. @nsitharaman – Watch at https://t.co/Maypg7NXYV pic.twitter.com/DwYtKkUACl
— BJP (@BJP4India) July 13, 2018
Subsequently, Prime Minister Narendra Modi also said in a program held in Uttar Pradesh, ‘I read in a newspaper that the party leader mentioned the Congress party as a Muslim party’.
'Is Congress party, a party for Muslim men only, or is it for Muslim women too?', says PM Modi pic.twitter.com/CRv41UuJT7
— TIMES NOW (@TimesNow) July 14, 2018
Some Muslim scholars have met Rahul Gandhi when he was the Congress leader. Following this, such news has been published in the Urdu newspaper.
Alt News, when the claim was viral earlier in 2018, spoke to Fuzail Ahmed Ayyubi who is an advocate-on-record at the Supreme Court and was present at this meeting. According to him, no such statement was made. “The fact of the matter is that when an issue was raised before Congress President Shri Rahul Gandhi that how important Muslims are with regard to the policies/scheme of things of Congress Party. In reply to this Congress President Shri Rahul Gandhi said that Muslims are as important to the Congress Party as other religions/sections of the society are and the Congress Party belongs to the Muslims as it belongs to every other Indian, nothing more, nothing less”, he said.
Another person who attended the meeting, Ghazala Jamil, who is a faculty at the Centre for the Study of Law and Governance, JNU said, “At the meeting, Mr Gandhi clearly said that he saw Muslims as equal citizens–no more and no less.” Also, writer and social activist Farah Naqvi, who attended the meeting, denied the claim mentioned about Rahul Gandhi in the Urdu newspaper.
An article on the ‘News 18‘ website is found reporting the denial of the communication in charge of the Congress party, Randeep Surjewala, to the news published in the Urdu newspaper. He said, “The Prime Minister was lying by using the names of Rahul Gandhi and former prime minister Manmohan Singh. He was spreading the ‘poison of hatred and division’ sensing defeat in the next election”.
Priyanka Chaturvedi of the Congress party tweeted the claim on her Twitter page quoting, “This is absolute lies&shameful spin by the newspaper. The BJP using it to further its own agenda, yet again, exposes their desperate tactics to mislead the nation. However this will not deter us to fight for India’s founding principles& its democratic values.”
https://twitter.com/priyankac19/status/1017381412310315008?s=46&t=kIszbQH_arRSG8kPbuGeZw
It is known that when the news was published in the Urdu newspaper in 2018, the people who attended the meeting and the Congress party explained that it was false news.
This article is originally published in Tamil by Youturn.
Conclusion
In our search, we found that the claim that Rahul Gandhi declared the Congress party as a Muslim party is false.
