Viral Video Distorts Rahul Gandhi’s Words on Mahatma Gandhi’s Non-Violence Philosophy

A clipped video of Rahul Gandhi’s 2019 speech has resurfaced on Facebook with claims that he said Mahatma Gandhi adopted ahimsa from Islam. The viral clip is misleading, as it removes crucial context from the original speech, in which Gandhi spoke about non-violence as a shared ethical principle across religions. The selectively edited video had circulated earlier in 2019; its renewed spread is once again fuelling misinformation, Islamophobic commentary, and targeted attacks against the Congress leader.

A video clip circulating widely on Facebook since January 14 has sparked controversy by claiming that Congress leader Rahul Gandhi said, “Mahatma Gandhi adopted the idea of ahimsa from Islam.” The clipped video is being shared with captions suggesting that Gandhi credited Islam as the source of Mahatma Gandhi’s philosophy of non-violence.

However, a closer examination shows that the viral clip is misleading. The video is taken from a longer speech delivered by Rahul Gandhi in 2019 and has been selectively edited to remove crucial context. In the full speech, Rahul Gandhi is speaking more broadly about the core ethical principles shared across religions and is not making a standalone claim that Mahatma Gandhi derived ahimsa solely from Islam.

Why is the claim misleading?

On January 14, a Facebook user named Shiby PK shared a video clip of Congress leader Rahul Gandhi addressing a public gathering. The video carried a watermark of the Indian National Congress and was captioned, “Mahatma Gandhi adopted the idea of ahimsa from Islam.”, in Malayalam.

As of January 21, the post had garnered over 10,000 views, along with 356 likes and 73 shares. The clip also attracted significant engagement in the comments section, with at least 136 comments, many of which mocked Rahul Gandhi or sought to portray Islam negatively.

One comment read, “It’s like learning to be a vegetarian from a carnivorous animal.” Several similar remarks ridiculed the idea of associating the principle of non-violence with Islam and accused Rahul Gandhi of distorting history. Another user commented, “He does not even read his grandpa’s book The Discovery of India. At least he should read the 10th class history book once to know ahimsa was founded by Buddha—can someone educate him?”

Yet another comment, which drew significant engagement, stated, “Pappu sir will continue being the ‘future prime minister’.”

Who has now recirculated the clipped video?

Shiby PK, the Facebook user who has now shared the clip with a Malayalam caption, has a prior history of amplifying fake and misleading claims. On January 13, the same user shared a video featuring Supreme Court lawyer and politician Ashwini Upadhyay, in which he claimed that 75,000 children aged between one and five from poor families had gone missing from five states and were forcibly converted to Islam in orphanages in Kerala.

This claim was previously fact-checked and debunked by OBC in an earlier report.

Another user shared the same video on January 14 with an identical English caption, but this post gained significantly wider traction. As of January 22, it had recorded around 30,000 views, 1,200 likes, 265 comments, and 203 shares. The post also attracted a large number of Islamophobic comments, many of which sharply criticised Rahul Gandhi. These included remarks such as “grandson of Feroz Khan” and “the biggest idiot the world has ever seen.”

The video had earlier gone viral in 2019, shortly after the speech was delivered, with the same caption. At the time, it was widely shared across X (formerly Twitter) and Facebook.

The video was also shared by Pakistani Canadian author Tarek Fatah.

How did we verify?

We conducted a reverse image search using a keyframe from the viral video. The search led us to a YouTube video dated January 11, 2019, titled “Congress President Rahul Gandhi addresses Indian diaspora in Dubai.” The video was published on the official YouTube channel of the Indian National Congress.

The original video carries the same Indian National Congress watermark as seen in the viral clip, along with the party’s ‘hand’ symbol in the top right corner and an icon reading “Gandhi 150 Years” in the top left. These visual markers confirm that the viral clip was extracted from this longer video.

To understand the context of the statement, OBC examined the full speech from the original video. In the complete version, Rahul Gandhi says: “Mahatma Gandhi was a great exponent of non-violence. But Mahatma Gandhiji picked up the idea of non-violence from our great religions, from our great teachers. Mahatma Gandhi picked up the idea of non-violence from ancient Indian philosophy, from Islam, from Christianity, from Judaism, from every great religion where it is clearly written that violence will not help anyone achieve anything.”

The original speech is around 28 minutes long. The relevant portion begins at the 24:19 mark. But in the viral clip, it is abruptly cut immediately after Rahul Gandhi mentions the word “Islam, at 24:40. The truncation of the clip clearly shows that the statement was taken out of context to construct a misleading narrative.

The Times of India had reported on the event on January 12, 2019.

The analysis shows that the video currently being circulated is taken from an older speech and has been selectively clipped to remove its original context. The edited clip is being shared to promote a misleading narrative, fuel Islamophobic sentiment, and target Congress leader Rahul Gandhi.