The Gandhi family is well known for its roots related to the one of the major and the oldest political parties of the nation i.e. the Indian National Congress. The family is always surrounded and caught up in controversies. Recently, a Twitter user ‘No Conversion,’ first shared an image of the Congress President Sonia Gandhi which has gone viral ever since, which purportedly shows a bookshelf behind her with a book titled ‘How to convert India into a Christian Nation’. The image also shows a copy of the Holy Bible and a statue of Jesus Christ on the shelf and is shared with the caption ‘Who reads all these books?’. It was re-tweeted by over 1,000 people and garnered more than 2,900 likes. The tweet has since been deleted. Meanwhile, another user with over 2 lakh followers posted and accused the Congress of “rampant conversion appeasement, and brainwashing of young generation”.
Several netizens are sharing such posts on their Twitter and Facebook handles, one such user called out the Congress President and questioned whether if “Sonia Gandhi’s hand” was “behind the conversion in India”. Another user on Facebook claimed, “Zoom and see right side. One book titled ‘How to convert India into Christian nation’. Any further proof required?” François Gautier who describes himself as a writer and has over 63000 Twitter followers also posted the viral edited image cropping out Gandhi and zooming in on the book and statue.
To check the legitimacy, a reverse image search was conducted, on carrying such search an article was retrieved which was published in Hindustan Times which carried the same image. The photo was attributed to news agency PTI. On digging further the PTI’s archived section, the picture that was taken from a video address of Gandhi in 2020 was found. Also, while going through the Congress President’s Twitter account, the original post was found in which, Gandhi had addressed the people of Bihar on 27th October 2020, a day before Bihar went to the polls for the first phase. Gandhi is seen wearing the same attire as in the viral image. The bookshelf behind her shows that there is no Bible, a statue of Jesus or a book titled ‘How to convert India into a Christian nation.’ The space where the Holy Bible is seen in the viral photo is empty in the original and the conversion to Christianity book has been added by editing the title of another book. The statue of Jesus is nowhere to be seen in the bookshelf. All three of them have been edited into the photo to make the false claim. The Congress’s official YouTube channel had uploaded several videos of Sonia in front of the same bookshelf.
Further, National President of the Indian Youth Congress (IYC) Srinivas BV tweeted, “We’ve decided to file an FIR against all those handles sharing this morphed image. Dirty tricks of Amit Malware & company won’t be tolerated further.”
Thus, the viral image is doctored as the image is actually a screenshot of a YouTube video that was published by the Indian National Congress in October 2020, where Gandhi addressed the people of Bihar on matters related to the state’s economy and unemployment.
