Ashwini Upadhyay’s tweet came on the day the Karnataka govt was celebrating Tipu Sultan’s birth anniversary, against which the BJP had raised objections.
New Delhi: Bharatiya Janata Party spokesperson Ashwini Upadhyay has tweeted an image of an African slave trader from the nineteenth century, claiming it is a picture of the ‘real’ Tipu Sultan.
The BJP spokesperson had tweeted Saturday:
Vote the Candidates who support:
Uniform Education
Uniform Healthcare
Uniform Civil Code
Hinduism & Hindustan
Population Control Law
Ayodhya Kashi Mathura
One Nation One Constitution
One Nation One Name One Flag
Lifetime imprisonment to Corrupts
Seizure of 100% Benami Properties pic.twitter.com/qsu9NFzoMF— Ashwini Upadhyay (@AshwiniBJP) November 10, 2018
The tweet came on the day the JD(S)-Congress government in Karnataka was celebrating Tipu Sultan’s birth anniversary, against which the BJP had raised objections.
Tipu Sultan couldn’t have been photographed
The original image is of Rumaliza, a slave trader from Zanzibar, the coastal region of modern-day Tanzania, and was clicked in the late 1800s.
It’s impossible that Tipu Sultan, the ruler of Mysore, was ever photographed. He had died in 1799, fighting against the British, while the first-ever photograph was shot in 1826 by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce in France.
This is not the first time that this misinformation about Tipu Sultan is doing the rounds on social media. In June last year, the same image had gone viral.
BJP’s objections to Tipu Jayanti
In 2015, the Congress-led administration decided to observe the day with state-sponsored celebrations — an initiative that immediately became a flashpoint over Tipu’s persecution of Hindu and Christian subjects of conquered areas.
The BJP describes its opposition to Tipu Jayanti as “logical and principled”, calling him a murderous bigot, while the Congress has maintained that Tipu was a secular leader and freedom fighter.
Chief minister H.D. Kumaraswamy of the Janata Dal (Secular) had vowed to go ahead with the celebrations this year, but was conspicuous by his absence and was called out by a Congress MLA.
In collaboration with SM Hoaxslayer.
Correction: This article has been updated to correct the name of the slave trader in the picture from Tippu Tip to Rumaliza. The error is regretted.