Did Rahul Gandhi cook up an American story to prove his point about Dalit students?

A snippet of a comment on caste, reservations, merit, and entrance tests, made by Rahul Gandhi has courted controversy on social media. The minute-and-half-long clip shows Gandhi explaining how the definition of “meritorious” would flip if entrance test questions in India were set by Dalit educators.

To underline his point, Rahul Gandhi compared India’s IIT-JEE with the American SAT or the Scholastic Assessment Test, suggesting that IIT entrance exams in India should be prepared by Dalits so that more underprivileged students can get into these institutions.

He went on to describe how questions included in American SATs designed by Whites were racially biased against African Americans and Latin Americans. Gandhi says in the clip: “This went on for many years. Then one day a professor said let me try something. They got the same papers written by African Americans. They decided to get the papers written by African Americans. And when they gave the exam, do you know what happened? All the Whites failed.”

The viral clip is taken from an eight-minute video shared by Rahul Gandhi’s official YouTube channel on May 4, where he answered a question asked by a local regarding reservations and the Congress party’s proposed caste census.

What are the SAT exams that Rahul Gandhi referred to?

SATs or Scholastic Assessment Test are standardised assessment tests that most American high school students take. These tests included 98 questions in four modules: One for reading, one for writing, and two for mathematics.

The test was first designed in 1926 by Carl Brigham, a Princeton University professor, and was mandatory for admissions to colleges in the US until recently. Post the Covid-19 pandemic, several American universities have stopped assessing students based on their SAT scores.

Did Rahul Gandhi cook up a story about SATs?

In the video, Rahul Gandhi explained that following years of controversy about the SATs’ alleged racial bias, an experiment was conducted wherein the test was formulated by Black educators. He claimed that when this happened, all the White students who took this test failed.

We could not find any research paper or news report about any such experiment being conducted in the US. Rahul Gandhi did not cite any sources, timeframe, or where this alleged experiment was conducted, which makes this anecdote difficult to verify with any certainty.

Does the SAT have a racial bias?

There have been instances when the test has been accused of being formulated in a way that favours Whites over other races. Various articles written over the years, including one published by the National Education Association, the largest teachers' union in the US, cite research to show that the SATs have been racially biased.

Because of this, many universities in the US, including the University of California, Berkeley, California State University, among others, now follow a test-free or test-optional policy.

Is Rahul Gandhi’s comparison an oversimplification?

India Today spoke to Mukesh Khare, professor emeritus in the civil engineering department at IIT Delhi. Khare said that he did not agree with Rahul Gandhi’s assertion that more Dalit professors setting entrance tests would help lower-caste students get into IITs.

He explained: “The set of professors who design the question papers do not make questions based on the aspirants’ caste. Students are not being able to get into IITs because of their educational background, not because someone from their community is not designing the question paper.”

Khare also added that in designing entrance question papers, SC, ST, and OBC academics are also involved, adding that reservations are already in place in IITs.

Another IIT professor, on the condition of anonymity because of the politically sensitive matter, said it was wrong to assert that Dalit students don’t get into IITs because the questions are not being set by Dalit academics. The professor added that subjects like science and mathematics are not prone to be affected by who designed the questions.

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