Tipu Sultan’s ‘Real’ Photo Tweeted by BJP Spokesman is Not...Real

It seems the former Mysore ruler time travelled to the future to get clicked.

Fake and real pictures of Tipu Sultan.

(Photo altered by The Quint)

Video Editor: Vishal Kumar

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The Karnataka government may have opened a Pandora's box by sticking to its decision to celebrate 10 November as Tipu Jayanti. But the controversy around the 18th century ruler of the Mysore kingdom doesn't stop there.

‘Historical’ (read inaccurate) facts available on social media (think WhatsApp forwards and Facebook posts) claim this to be a photograph of the ‘real’ Tipu Sultan:

Photo being circulated on social media claiming it’s Tipu Sultan.(Photo Courtesy: Twitter/@Syed_Hammad71)

Leading a band of conspiracy cohorts circulating this photo is BJP spokesperson Ashwini Upadhyay, who tweeted a graphic card recently with two side-by-side photos, a black-and-white photo of the ‘real’ Tipu and what looks like a reproduction of a painting.

The post first surfaced in 2015 after which it was shared by many on different platforms.

Some took a dig at the Congress party and claimed the “real” image of the ruler in black-and-white is available at a British museum. Others said history schoolbooks have been manipulated by the party.

WHAT’S THE TRUTH?

This would’ve been true if Tipu could time travel into the future much after his death on 4 May 1799 to get photographed, because the earliest photo ever taken dates back to 1826 or 1827.

The first ever photo was clicked by French inventor Nicéphore Niépce, where he captured the view from a window at his French estate.

Meanwhile, a reverse image search reveals that this black-and-white photo is one of Tippu Tip, or Tippu Tib – real name Hamad bin Muhammad bin Juma bin Rajab el Murjebi – who was a Swahili-Zanzibari slave trader, ivory trader, explorer, plantation owner and governor.

A simple reverse image search reveals that the photo is of Tippu Tib, a Swahili–Zanzibari slave trader.(Photo: The Quint)

This fake image was also called out by Social Media Hoax Slayer in June 2017, but is still being circulated unabashedly.

However, an Alt News report claimed that the image, in fact, was not even of Tippu Tip but of Mohammed Bin Khalfan, commonly known as Rumaliza, another prominent slave trader of Zanzibar of the 19th century.

The report said that Rumaliza has a striking resemblance to Tippu Tip.

The image being circulated as that of Tipu Sultan could well be of Rumaliza (who shares a striking resemblance to Tippu Tip), another prominent slave trader of Zanzibar.(Photo: Alt News)

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