The leader of India’s main opposition party Rahul Gandhi brandished a copy of the Indian Constitution – not the Chinese Constitution, as members of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) wrongly suggested – during an election rally. They shared a photo taken at a rally during India’s national elections, but a clearer photo from the event shows Gandhi holding up an edition of “The Constitution of India” from publisher EBC.
Himanta Biswa Sarma, a BJP politician and chief minister of India’s northeastern state of Assam, Posted the photo on X, formerly Twitter, on May 17, 2024 (archived link).
“The original copy of the Constitution of India has a blue cover. The original Chinese Constitution has a red cover,” he wrote.
“Does Rahul have a Chinese constitution? We will have to verify this.”
The post includes an image showing Gandhi delivering a speech while holding up a book with a red cover.
The post also includes photos of the red cover of the Chinese Constitution, and the original copy of the Indian Constitution – which is blue and gold in color and is kept in a special helium-filled case in the library of the Indian Parliament (archived link).
Several BJP members shared the claim and images elsewhere on X here And herein the final weeks of India’s six-week national elections.
Gandhi has regularly waved the Indian constitution at election rallies and warned that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s BJP wants to drastically change the text to support Hindu nationalist politics.
However, Home Minister Amit Shah said told According to Indian broadcaster NDTV, the BJP government had no intention of changing the constitution (archived link).
Indian Constitution
A reverse image search of Gandhi’s photo found it in a Instagram post by Revanth Reddychief minister of the southern state of Telangana, which was shared on May 5 (archived link).
The post contains several photos from an election rally that Gandhi attended in the state.
Below is a screenshot comparison between the photo as shown in the fake post (left) and in Reddy’s Instagram post (right):
Reddy wrote in Telugu, “The Constitution has given us self-respect and rights for the people of the country. We will protect the Constitution at any cost. ~ Rahul Gandhi.”
One of the other photos in the Instagram post shows a frontal view of Gandhi holding a red book titled “The Constitution of India.”
The letters ‘EBC’ can also be seen in the lower right corner of the book’s cover.
Below is a screenshot of Reddy’s Instagram post, with the book enlarged by AFP:
A keyword search on Google found this to be the edition of the Constitution published by legal publisher EBC (archived link).
A company spokesperson confirmed that Gandhi was in possession of a paperback edition of the Indian Constitution drafted by senior lawyer Gopal Sankaranarayanan.
The title is widely available online (archived link).
Local media reported that Gandhi was a pocket-sized copy of the Indian Constitution at the meeting in Telangana (archived link).
Gandhi too Posted a video of himself on YouTube holding the book and urging voters to “save” the Constitution (archived link).
