In a video going viral on social media, a Sikh man confronted Rahul Gandhi, asking why he is spreading fear that Sikhs wouldn’t be allowed to wear turbans or kada under the BJP.
The viral clip of Congress leader and Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi is from a conversation at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, dated April 21, 2025. The session was moderated by Ashutosh Varshney, Director of the Saxena Center for Contemporary South Asia at Brown University, Rhode Island, USA. The full conversation was posted by the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs on May 3, 2025.
During the conversation, a Sikh man sitting in the audience reminded Rahul Gandhi about a statement he had made during his last visit to the USA, where he directly addressed Sikhs in India and abroad. Rahul Gandhi spoke about India under the BJP and questioned whether Sikhs would be allowed to wear the kada or tie their turbans under BJP rule, thereby creating fear among Sikhs about what India under the BJP would look like.
The Sikh man told Rahul Gandhi, “We don’t just want to wear kadas, we don’t just want to tie our turbans, we want freedom of expression, which under the Congress party in the past has not been allowed.”
He reminded Rahul Gandhi that Congress has long attacked Sikh freedom of speech and protected those responsible for the violence. He also directly questioned why Congress continues to shield the 1984 anti-Sikh riot accused like Sajjan Kumar.
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He said, “Your party lacks the maturity to accept the mistakes it has made such as Sajjan Kumar just now being tried and there are many more like Sajjan Kumar currently sitting in the Congress party.”
“You tell us to fear what BJP’s India would look like, but you’ve never really tried to reconcile with the Sikhs,” he asked Rahul Gandhi.
Notably, last year in September, while speaking at an event in Herndon, Virginia, Rahul Gandhi said, “The fight (in India) is about whether a Sikh is going to be allowed to wear a turban… whether a Sikh will be allowed to wear a kada or go to the Gurudwara.”
The BJP, in reply, reminded Rahul Gandhi about the 1984 Sikh genocide in Delhi after the death of Indira Gandhi. The riots were orchestrated by some Congress leaders, with the BJP accusing Gandhi of overlooking the Congress party’s own history with the Sikh community.
Notably, after Indira Gandhi’s assassination in 1984, then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi justified the widespread violence against Sikhs by saying, “Bade ped girte hain to dharti hilti hai” (When a big tree falls, the earth shakes). More than 3,000 Sikhs were brutally killed during the 1984 anti-Sikh riots in Delhi. Mobs led by Congress leaders like Sajjan Kumar, Jagdish Tytler, and many others burned homes, looted shops, attacked Gurudwaras, and killed innocent Sikh men, women, and children.
It is to be noted that, a Delhi Court on February 25, 2025 awarded life sentence to the Congress leader Sajjan Kumar in a case related to killing the father-son duo in the Saraswati Vihar area during the anti-Sikh massacre. This comes after the former Congress MP Sajjan Kumar was convicted on February 12 for killing of the father-son duo.
