Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently, in a campaign speech, misquoted former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's comments from a December 2006 speech, misleadingly claiming that the Congress leader said Muslims have the first right to India's resources. Modi made the claim in his speech, where he also criticised the Congress party's manifesto and made remarks with communal undertones during a public rally in Rajasthan.
Modi on April 21, 2024, at a public rally in Banswara, Rajasthan, also went on to link Singh's old remarks to the Congress 2024 Lok Sabha manifesto and falsely claimed that the opposition party if voted to power, would distribute the country's wealth, to "those who have more children" and "infiltrators".
Interestingly, this is not the first time Modi has made this claim. In October 2023, at an election rally in Chattisgarh, he made the same claims about Congress; while taking a swipe at Congress’s demand for a nationwide caste census. Modi in 2006, as the chief minister of Gujarat also "publicly condemened" the same misquoted remarks by Singh.
BOOM found that former PM Singh's speech was taken out of context by Modi. Furthermore, we found that Singh’s comments were misreported at that time by mainstream news outlets. A reading of Singh’s entire speech and the Approach Paper or an outline of the 11th Five Year Plan, on which the former PM based his speech in 2006, shows this.
Modi's speech in Hindi, translated to English reads, "When the Congress was in power they said that Muslims had the 'first right' to the nation's wealth. This means, they will gather all the wealth and distribute it among whom? Whoever has more children.They will distribute it among infiltrators. Should your hard-earned wealth be given to infiltrators? Do you accept this? This is what the Congress manifesto says. They will take the gold that our mothers and sisters have, they will count and assess it, and then they will distribute that wealth...they will give it to those people that Manmohan Singh's government had said – that Muslims have the first right to the nation's wealth."
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The same statement can be heard from the 28.45 minutes timestamp in the speech below as uploaded on the Bharatiya Janata Party's official YouTube channel.
FACT-CHECK
BOOM found that the claim is misleading and that former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's statement has been taken out of context.
The statement is from a speech Singh made on December 9, 2006 at the 52nd meeting of the National Development Council in New Delhi. The speech was about the Approach Paper to the 11th Five Year Plan and titled ‘Towards Faster and More Inclusive Growth’.
A 57 second snippet of Singh's speech can be
seen here on Reddit uploaded about two years ago.
The meeting was also attended by chief ministers of all states and Singh as the then prime minister spoke about the need for faster growth rates while ensuring it was broad-based.
"But growth alone is not enough if it does not produce a flow of benefits that is sufficiently wide-spread," Singh said in his speech. The transcript of the entire speech can be found here.
Who Are “They”?
A reading of the transcript shows the former prime minister was quoted out of context by the media and BJP leaders even in 2006 as now.
The quote being fact-checked is toward the latter part of his speech where he emphasised that the 11th Five Year plan needed to focus on the upliftment of marginalised groups such as the Scheduled Caste/Scheduled Tribes (SC/STs), other backward classes, minorities, women and children along with faster growth.
The former prime minister said the following:
“I believe our collective priorities are clear. Agriculture, irrigation and water resources, health, education, critical investment in rural infrastructure, and the essential public investment needs of general infrastructure, along with programmes for the upliftment of SC/STs, other backward classes, minorities and women and children. The component plans for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes will need to be revitalized. We will have to devise innovative plans to ensure that minorities, particularly the Muslim minority, are empowered to share equitably in the fruits of development. They must have the first claim on resources. The Centre has a myriad other responsibilities whose demands will have to be fitted within the over-all resource availability. The Planning Commission will of course undertake a thorough review of ongoing programmes to eliminate those which have outlived their original rationale, but we cannot escape from the fact that the Centre's resources will be stretched in the immediate future and an increasing share of the responsibility will have to be shouldered by the states.” - Manmohan Singh, Prime Minister of India.
The ‘they’ in the sentence - “they must have the first claim on resources” - does not just refer to Muslims or minorities but includes SC/STs, OBCs, women and children.
Approach Paper Corroborates The Same
BOOM also found the Approach Paper to the 11th Five Year Plan uploaded on the Ministry of Education’s website.
The paper is dated June 14, 2006, almost six months before Manmohan Singh’s speech in December that year. In the document the word ‘minorities’ is used alongside Schedule Caste and Schedule Tribes.
The most detailed reference to minorities is with regards to education in the draft document. Under sub-head 5.5 ‘Bringing on Par: SCs, STs, Minorities and others left behind’, the paper stated that education was the most effective instrument of social empowerment.
The draft further state that some minorities had fallen behind the national average in education and that it was necessary to identify the root of the problem so that remedial steps could be taken in the 11th five-year plan. It also proposed a special focus on minority-dominated areas in the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan and identifying ways to incentivise minority students.
In the same section with reference to SC, STs and tribals, the draft mentioned eradicating manual scavenging, bonded labour and expeditious adoption of the National Tribal Policy. Nowhere does the draft state minorities or Muslims exclusively would have the first claim on resources.
The Approach Paper can be read here.
Clarification From The Prime Minister’s Office
On December 10, 2006, a day after the speech, the Prime Minister’s Office issued a clarification that said Singh was quoted out of context by some sections of the media like NDTV, PTI and Times Of India.
The clarification quoted the relevant portion of the speech and added "It will be seen from the above that the Prime Minister's reference to "first claim on resources" refers to all the "priority" areas listed above, including programmes for the upliftment of SCs, STs, OBCs, women and children and minorities."
The statement called the controversy, “a deliberate and mischievous misinterpretation of what the Prime Minister said.”
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While many have interpreted 'they' to mean Muslims because of the immediately preceding sentence which states "particularly Muslim minorities"; a full reading of the speech and the draft paper make it clear Manmohan Singh was not referring to the Muslim community alone but was also speaking about SC/STs, OBCs, women and children.