Original Photo of Sai Baba Grinding Wheat: Fact Check

Story:

Original Photo of Baba grinding wheat, Baijama or Smt Lakshmi Bhai Shinde Patil looks on.
A rare one.

Fact Check:

A picture message is popular on social media purporting to show an old, original Photograph of Indian saint Sai Baba grinding wheat beside Baijama. It appears to show both the saint and his devotee in an old, black and white photograph. No, the claims are not true – the photograph is not real and derived from an artist’s painting.

Not Original Photos of Sai Baba Grinding Wheat beside Baijama

The story reminds us of an old one claiming to show few photographs of Shirdi Sai Baba’s Antim Yatra back on 16th October 1918. The claims are not true as the photographs were more recent.

As we looked into the origins of the photograph in question, we found the full-size photograph in an article on Rgyan website rgyan.com. The article titled ‘Heart Touching Miracles By Shirdi Sai Baba‘ uses the photograph to describe the story of Sai Baba grinding wheat. It explains an incident when during Cholera helpless Shirdi people approached Baba for relief. Baba took some wheat and started grinding in a hand mill. He then asked the people to take the flour and throw it on the village borders. With the grace of Baba, the Cholera epidemic subsided and the villagers were happy.

Some original pictures of Sai Baba are available on the blog babasaiofshirdi.org. Again, the photograph in question does not appear to show the real saint. Likewise, we found the original photograph in color version. It is in fact a painting from artist Sunil Shegaonkar. The artist makes paintings in realistic style and has made many paintings on Sri Sai Charitra on big canvases. What you see is in fact a biographical painting of Sri Sai Baba made by the artist.

The next photograph of his painting shows Sai Baba along with Mhalsapati. For your information, well-known Tatya was in fact the beloved son of Baijama.

Hoax or Fact:

Hoax.