No, Mallikarjun Kharge did not say Congress had divided India on caste

A short clip has gone viral on social media with the claim that Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge criticized Congress for dividing the country on the basis of caste. In this 7-second clip, Kharge can be seen declaring, presumably in a public speech, that Congress is always trying to divide the country based on caste.

A verified X (formerly Twitter) user posted the viral clip with a caption in Hindi that can be roughly translated as – ‘Kharge Sahab is also saying that Congress is dividing the country in the name of caste.’ (Archive)

खरगे साहब भी कह रहा है कि कॉंग्रेस जाति के नाम पर देश को डिवाइड कर रही है

That’s #WhyModi pic.twitter.com/bmbjIHFVGd

— Himanta Biswa Sarma ( Congressiyon ke Papa) Parody (@HimantaBiswa_S) March 7, 2024

Another user posted on Facebook with a similar claim that the Congress President had inadvertently condemned his own party. (Archive)

 

Fact Check

Alt News ran a reverse image search on one of the key frames from the viral video, and came across this YouTube video posted by the news channel, Times Bharat, on February 16, 2024. The caption indicates that the speech is from a Congress rally held at Aurangabad, Bihar, as a part of the Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra, in February 2024.

We ran a relevant keyword search on Google and came across this video uploaded by the official channel of Congress on YouTube.

In the full speech, Kharge speaks about the party’s commitment to conducting socio-economic caste surveys in order to assess the progress of various communities in India since its independence.

At the 13:11 mark, Kharge can be heard exclaiming ‘Modi says that the Congress Party is always trying to divide the country on the basis of caste differences…What are we doing? All we are trying to do is provide justice to the people’ (Translation from Hindi). It is thus evident that he attributes the comment from the viral clip to Prime Minister Modi, criticizing him for not supporting the move for the caste survey.

In the small clip which has gone viral, the segment of the speech where Kharge mentions PM Modi’s name has been cut out to make it look like Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge is blaming his own party for the division of the country on the basis of caste.

To sum up, the viral clip is part of a longer speech by Mallikarjun Kharge, wherein he implicates Prime Minister Modi for not supporting the nationwide caste survey. The claim that the Congress president criticized his own party for dividing the country on caste-based differences is thus false.

Prantik Ali is an intern at Alt News.