BJP MP Lahar Singh Siroya mocked Congress leader Rahul Gandhi for inaccurately describing an historical episode concerning his family and India’s freedom movement. Gandhi, in his recent video on his official YouTube channel, which has 9.2 million subscribers, talked about Mahatma Gandhi and India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, connecting their lives with his own political life.
In his speech, Rahul Gandhi said that Mahatma Gandhi was “thrown out of a train in the UK,” and that this prompted his “great-great-grandfather and his cousins” to seek revenge. This assertion caught the attention of Siroya, who was quick to correct the factual inaccuracy: the incident in question occurred in South Africa, not in the UK.
Siroya took to X to express his disappointment, noting, “I was watching this interview with interest since Rahul Gandhi was speaking about his great-grandfather, Pandit Nehru. But I was shocked and greatly disappointed when I heard him say that Mahatma Gandhi Ji was pushed from a train in England.” He had videotaped the clip so that the remark could not be edited out later and noted that every individual who is less educated knows the correct facts of Gandhi’s incident in South Africa.
It was on June 7, 1893, while working as a lawyer in Natal that Mahatma Gandhi was literally thrown off a first-class train seat from Durban to Pretoria. Siroya also challenged the timeline, wondering, “Rahul Ji also states that his great-grandfather and his cousins went to Allahabad railway station to eject some Britishers in protest of Gandhi Ji’s insult. In June 1893, when Gandhi Ji was thrown off the train, Nehru Ji was merely 4 years old. Did a 4-year-old go to the railway station in Allahabad to protest?”
Siroya’s remarks also pointed to Sandeep Dikshit, son of former Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, who participated in the debate with Gandhi in the YouTube video. In the podcast-style conversation for The Nehru Centre, Gandhi informed us about what keeps him going, stating “the pursuit of truth” inspires him, drawing on the legacy of his great-grandfather.
Gandhi depicted Nehru not just as a politician, but as a thinker and seeker who encountered challenges with tenacity, and maintained that his uncompromising quest for truth directed his ideals and actions.
