A photo circulating on social media (here, here, and here) claims to show Jana Sangh founder Dr. Shyama Prasad Mukherjee with Muslim League leader Mohammad Ali Jinnah, alleging that the man standing to Jinnah’s right in the photo, highlighted with a circle, is Mukherjee. The post further claims that Dr. Mukherjee and the Hindu Mahasabha formed coalition governments with Jinnah’s Muslim League in Bengal, Sind, and the NWFP, and that he served as Bengal’s Finance Minister under A. K. Fazlul Haq, after Haq moved the 1940 resolution calling for Pakistan. Let’s verify the claim made in the post in this article.
Claim: The photo shows Shyama Prasad Mukherjee, founder of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, with Muhammad Ali Jinnah, founder of the All-India Muslim League.
Fact: The person sitting to Jinnah’s right is not Shyama Prasad Mukherjee, founder of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, but Pakistan’s second Prime Minister, Khawaja Nazimuddin. Hence, the claim made in the post is FALSE.
To verify the claim, we conducted a Google Lens search of the viral photo’s screenshot, which led us to the uncropped version on the stock photo website Alamy. According to the photo’s description, it is from a Muslim League Working Committee session held in Lucknow. The same photo is also available on Wikimedia Commons. Additionally, there is no evidence to suggest that Shyama Prasad Mukherjee was a member of the Muslim League; he was the founder of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh (here, here).
We also found another photo of the people featured in it on the stock photo website Getty Images and in a 2015 article by The Hindu Frontline. According to the captions, the man to Jinnah’s right is identified as ‘Sir Nizam-ud-Din,’ who, as the Frontline article notes, was the Home Minister of the Bengal government.
We found that Sir Nizam-ud-Din’s real name was Khawaja Nazimuddin (here, here, here). After serving as the Home Minister in the Bengal government, he went on to become Pakistan’s second Prime Minister. Comparing his photos on the Pakistan National Assembly website (here, here), Getty Images, and other public domain sources (here, here), along with the Frontline article and the Getty and Alamy stock photos, it is clear that Sir Nizam-ud-Din and Khawaja Nazimuddin are the same person.
The comparison between photos of Shyama Prasad Mukherjee, founder of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, and Pakistan’s second Prime Minister, Khawaja Nazimuddin, can be seen below.
To sum up, the person sitting to the right of Mohammad Ali Jinnah in this photo is not Jana Sangh founder Dr. Shyama Prasad Mukherjee.
