This Image Of The Indian Tricolour Doing Rounds Of Social Media Is A Fake
The hackers of JNUSU president Kanhaiya Kumars Facebook account uploaded a photograph of the Tricolour being hoisted by soldiers as his profile photo. Recently during a debate on a TV channel a panellist had also shown a similar photograph and said it was that of Indian soldiers. The photo has gone viral ever since with many posting it to their Facebook profiles.
The hackers of JNUSU president Kanhaiya Kumar's Facebook account uploaded a photograph of the Tricolour being hoisted by soldiers as his profile photo.
Recently, during a debate on a TV channel, a panellist had also shown a similar photograph and said it was that of Indian soldiers hoisting the Tricolour at the border.
The photo has gone viral ever since with many posting it to their Facebook profiles and updating statues "feeling proud".
TOI
It escaped their attention that the Tricolour is in colour while the soldiers and the backdrop is in black and white. There's a reason for that it's a morphed photograph.
The original photo was clicked by Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal when five US Marine Corps soldiers and a US Navy hospital corpsman had hoisted the American flag at Mount Suribachi after the Battle of Iwo Jima on February 23, 1945.
AP
The photo had won the Pulitzer Prize that year and was used to sculpt the Marine Corps War Memorial in 1954 too.
The photograph has had its share of controversies in the last 70 years.
But anyone familiar with Second World War imagery would agree that this is one of the most recognisable photographs of that war: something that has come to symbolise the stellar American contribution to victory in the war and the fighting spirit and resilience of the American GI.
That this has been morphed and circulated around by the nouveau patriots is a telling comment on the understanding of the Second World War in India: a conflict in which 2.5 million Indians had fought.
If one had to choose a picture to show the gallantry of Indians from that era, then there are scores of photographs of the old Indian Army fighting and defeating the Nazis and the Fascists in North Africa, the Middle East and Italy, and the Japanese in Burma, Malaya and Singapore. Of course, the flag used then was the Union Jack and the Star of India flag.
For the Tricolour, there are scores of photographs of Indians unfurling the Tricolour everywhere on Mount Everest, at Kargil during the war, at Antarctica...the list is endless.
IndianDefenceReview
What was the great need then to hijack a moment of American history and run it as Indian? Is it not an insult to the glory of India? Does this hoax make anyone a patriot? Perhaps it's time to do some soul-searching.