Fact Check: Claims of Jesus Christ in Rahul Gandhi’s Selfie Are False

The Congress leader Rahul Gandhi posted a selfie of himself and Sonia Gandhi voting in the sixth round of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. The picture quickly went viral on social media.

The claim: The people who shared the picture made fun of Gandhi by saying that he was a “janeudhari brahmin,” or “thread-wearing Brahmin,” and that he had a picture of Jesus Christ in his room but none of the Hindu gods.

This is being shared by X (formerly Twitter) user “MrSinha_,” who has been known to spread false information in the past.

But…: Jesus isn’t in the picture.

The painting is called “Madonna Oriflamma” and was made by the Russian artist Nicholas Roerich. The woman in the painting is holding a peace flag.

How did we understand the truth? It caught our attention that the background picture showed a person carrying a banner with three red dots inside a red circle.

We found a blog post from 2017 with the same picture by searching for “person holding red circle with three dots painting.”

It said the picture was a painting by Nikolái Roerich from 1932 called “Madonna Oriflamma.”

It also said that Roerich made the geometric art and that he called it the “Banner of Peace,” giving more information about what the banner meant.

We looked up the painting’s name online and found it on a number of different sites.

One of the results was the painting’s WikiArt page, which said that it was on show at the Nicholas Roerich Museum in New York and had been last updated in 2013.

In 2021, the museum’s Facebook page also posted a picture of the painting and talked about what it meant and what it symbolized.

Roerich’s website also has a picture of the painting along with information about its medium and size. It also says that the painting has been on loan to the museum since 1960.

Conclusion: The picture of Rahul and Sonia Gandhi does not show a drawing of Jesus Christ.