Today an old tweet posted by official Twitter handle of Congress party is doing the rounds on Twitter. On 27 October 2016, the party had tweeted a photo saying that it is Abdul Ghaffar Khan with a young Indira Gandhi. Ghaffar Khan was also known as Frontier Gandhi and Bacha Khan.
Frontier Gandhi, Khan Abdul Gaffar Khan with a young Indira Gandhi. pic.twitter.com/CYavzrEGHV
— Congress (@INCIndia) October 27, 2016
Reacting to the tweet, many Twitter users replied that it is not Indira Gandhi. Most people have pointed out that the girl in the photo does not look like Indira. Did the Congress party label someone else as former prime minister Indira Gandhi? We decided to find out.
The photo tweeted by the Congress official Twitter handle is a cropped version of the following photo.
When we did a reverse image search using this photo, we found a mixed result. While several websites say it is Indira Gandhi, many others simply say a girl, without any name.
Next, we tried to find out other childhood photos of Indira Gandhi. Several photos of Indira Gandhi from her childhood are available on the internet.
Looking at those photos, it makes it clear that the girl with Frontier Gandhi does not match with Indira Gandhi in her childhood. The facial features in the photos are very different, making it very unlikely that the girl in the photo is Indira Gandhi.
Another point to be noted is that Ghaffar Khan was born in the year 1890, and Indira Gandhi was born in 1917, meaning she was 27 years younger to him. But in the image, the age of Khan looks much older compared to the girl. In the photo, Khan looks like he is in his 50s or 60s, and by that time Indira Gandhi was already a grown-up woman.
In this photo from 1945, Khan is seen with Indira Gandhi standing beside him. The child he is holding is Rajiv Gandhi, who was born in 1944.
Therefore, it can be concluded the girl in the photo is not Indira Gandhi, but someone else. On Twitter, some people replied to the Congress tweet saying that it is Ela Gandhi, granddaughter of Mahatma Gandhi. Ela Gandhi was born in 1940, so the age difference matches with the photo, but when looked into that, we found that the girl does not match with young Ela Gandhi either. The website Gandhimedia.org has several photos of Khan with Ela Gandhi in her childhood, and she looks different in those photos from the photo posted by the Congress Twitter handle.
Therefore, the girl with Ghaffar Khan is someone else, and certainly not Indira Gandhi.
