Fact Check: PM Modi Didn’t Pay Tributes To Godse, Viral Image Of Deendayal Upadhyaya Shared With Misleading Claim

New Delhi (Vishvas News): After the recently concluded Gandhi Jayanti, a collage featuring two distinct photographs of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has gone viral on social media. The claim accompanying these images suggests that in one picture, Prime Minister Modi is paying tribute to Mahatma Gandhi, while in the other, he is allegedly paying tribute to Mahatma Gandhi’s assassin, Nathuram Godse.

Upon investigation, Vishvas News has determined this claim to be false. It appears that this viral image is being spread with the intention of political propaganda based on a fabricated assertion. In the viral photograph, the statue incorrectly identified as Nathuram Godse actually depicts the founder of Jan Sangh, Deendayal Upadhyay, who was a prominent thinker associated with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and served as the president of the Bharatiya Jan Sangh.

Claim:

Social media user (archive link) ‘Sultan Begusarai’ has shared the viral collage, in which it is claimed that while in one picture Prime Minister Modi is paying tribute to Mahatma Gandhi, in the other picture he is paying tribute to Nathuram Godse. Many other users on social media have shared this picture with similar claims.

Investigation:

In the first picture of the viral collage, Prime Minister Narendra Modi can be seen paying tribute in front of the statue of Mahatma Gandhi. During a reverse image search, we found this picture in many old reports. This photo is of September 30, 2018, when Narendra Modi visited the Mahatma Gandhi Museum in Rajkot, Gujarat.

This photo has been used in a report published on the Indian Express website on October 15, 2018.

During the search, we found the second picture in a report published on ibtimes website on April 6, 2017. According to the information given, in the presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the then BJP President Amit Shah and then Union Ministers Venkaiah Naidu and Suresh Prabhu were seen paying tributes to the statue of Pandit Deendayal Upadhyay.

We also found this picture on the website of One India.com. According to the information given in the report published on August 11, 2017, Prime Minister Narendra Modi paid tribute to the statue of Deendayal Upadhyay on the occasion of the 37th foundation day of the party in the presence of the then BJP President Amit Shah.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi paying homage in front of the statue of Deendayal Upadhyay, which is being shared with the false claim of it being Godse’s statue, can be clearly distinguished in the following collage.

We reached out to Uttar Pradesh BJP spokesperson Harishchandra Srivastava concerning the viral picture. He described the claim associated with the viral image as fictitious and politically motivated propaganda against Prime Minister Narendra Modi. According to him, the statue in question is that of Deendayal Upadhyay.

Information available on the deendayalupadhyay.org website reveals that Pandit Deendayal Upadhyay was the founder of the Bharatiya Jan Sangh Party. Several reports on the pmindia.gov.in website also show Prime Minister Narendra Modi paying homage in front of his statue.

The user who shared PM Modi’s picture with the false claim is followed by approximately 1,500 people on Facebook. This picture had previously gone viral on social media with a similar claim, and the fact-check report for it can be found here.