India's opposition Congress Party leader and a former UN diplomat Shashi Tharoor took a jibe at US President Donald Trump for calling Prime Minister Narendra Modi "the Father of India".
"Maybe Mr Trump doesn't know independent India was born in 1947 and Modi Ji's birth date is either 1949 or '50. It' will be difficult if the father is born after the child…", he said at an event in the central Indian city of Indore on Thursday.
When Tharoor’s statement appeared on Twitter, a large number of people expressed their disgust and said, the statement shows the Congress leader in a poor light and not Modi.
Both Modi and Trump exhibited a rare chemistry of friendship during all their engagements on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York last month, with the US President calling the prime minister “the Father of India”, heaping praise on him for his “fantastic job”, following the “Howdy, Modi!”, an Indian community event in Houston organised by the Texas India Forum.
Modi’s ministerial colleagues and party leaders had hailed the statement of US President, with Dr Jitendra Singh, a junior minister, saying, “….if someone is not proud of this, then maybe he does not consider himself Indian”. He said if the opposition Congress Party had a problem with Trump’s claim, they could argue with him.