Funeral of Ramana Maharshi passed off as last rites of Shirdi Sai Baba
A black and white picture purportedly showing the funeral of Sai Baba of Shirdi is viral on social media.
By Newsmeter Network
HYDERABAD: A black and white picture purportedly showing the funeral of Sai Baba of Shirdi is viral on social media.
The viral picture shows devotees and other sages conducting the last rites of the Baba whose body is covered in garlands.
The picture has been shared on a Facebook group dedicated to Shirdi Sai Baba and captioned as "Om Sai Ramji." Several other social media users have also shared it.
https://www.facebook.com/
FACT CHECK:
NewsMeter ran a reverse image search on Yandex and found a tweet from November 8, 2017, that carries the same picture. It reads: "The final days of a sage: Henri Cartier-Bresson captured the last photographs of Ramana Maharshi and his subsequent funeral in #Tiruvannamalai, Tamil Nadu, in April of 1950. Cartier-Bresson also bore witness to a fireball that streaked across the sky during the moment of passing."
Using this as a hint, NewsMeter searched further and found the same funeral photo carried in photography websites/ galleries called 'Magnum Photos' and 'Realization' that identified the man as Hindu sage Sri Ramana Maharshi who died in 1950. The picture was taken in Tiruvannamalai, Tamil Nadu, and is licensed to the French Surrealist Photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson.
The same image was also found in August 2014 Newsletter (Page 2) from the official site of Ramana Maharshi. Ramana Maharshi was an Indian Hindu sage. He was born in Tiruchuli, Tamil Nadu, and is mostly known by the name Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi. (Read more here)
Evidently, the viral picture shows the funeral of sage Ramana Maharshi and not Sai Baba of Shirdi. Thus, the claim is false.
