The viral image showing K.B.Hedgewar and B.R. Ambedkar on a motorcycle is digitally manipulated
A post circulating widely on social media (here, here, and here) claims to show K.B. Hedgewar, the founder of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), alongside Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, on a motorcycle. The post also credits the photo to photographer Christopher Gemini and suggests that it is a rare and exclusive photo. Let’s verify the claim made in the post through this article.
Claim: A photo of K.B.Hedgewar alongside Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, riding a motorcycle.
Fact: The viral image shows signs of digital manipulation, including blurry faces and unnatural body postures, making it unauthentic. There are no credible historical sources about such a photo. Additionally, the motorcycle’s registration number is inconsistent with the historical period, and no record exists of a photographer named Christopher Gemini. Hence, the claim made in the post is FALSE.
A closer look at the image shows typical signs of AI generation or digital tampering—blurry or incomplete faces, smudged features, and unnatural body postures. The two men on the bike look unusually stiff, with lighting that doesn’t match the background, suggesting the photo is not authentic.
To check if the photo was real, we ran a reverse image search, but the image doesn’t appear in any reliable news archives, history books, or official collections related to Dr. Ambedkar or Hedgewar. Instead, it is only found on social media posts and online forums, with no trustworthy source. If this were a genuine historical photograph, it would almost certainly be part of a museum collection, a biography, or national archives. Its complete absence from such sources strongly suggests that the image is not authentic.
We searched for the name “Christopher Gemini” but found no record of any such photographer in historical archives or credible sources. The name only appears alongside this viral image, with no background, portfolio, or connection to Indian history.
The viral image has a bike with the registration number ‘78787655’, which seems inaccurate. The vehicle registration numbers earlier followed an alphanumeric format based on provincial codes, such as ‘B XXXX’ for Bombay or ‘MYS XXXX’ for Mysore. We did not find that a plain 8-digit number like ‘78787655’ was ever part of the registration system during British rule.
To sum up, the viral image showing K.B. Hedgewar and B.R. Ambedkar on a motorcycle is fake and digitally manipulated.