Muslim Youth League (MYL) general secretary P.K. Firos became the latest butt of jokes online as one of his off-the-cuff remarks during a political meeting snowballed into a controversy on Wednesday.
Mr. Firos’s moment of embarrassment came while he was attending a public event at Pattambi in Palakkad district on Tuesday evening as part of the organisation’s ongoing ‘Yuvajana Yatra’ from Kasaragod to Thiruvananthapuram.
Factual mistakes
While praising Congress president Rahul Gandhi, he had said, “His great-grandfather, Mahatma Gandhi, succumbed to the bullets of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh to uphold Hindu-Muslim unity. He grew up listening to the stories of the Mahatma. His great-grandmother and grandmother too sacrificed their lives for the nation. Rahul Gandhi was witness to all that when he was a child. When his father was brutally murdered in Coimbatore, he could not even see him for the last time..”
The video of the speech soon went viral on social media as critics were quick to point out the factual mistakes in it. They pointed out that Feroze Gandhi, Rahul’s grandfather, was in no way related to the Mahatma and he had died of a heart attack. There was no record of his great-grandmother sacrificing her life for the nation either. That Rajiv Gandhi, Rahul’s father, died at Sripermbudur, not in Coimbatore, was cited as another bloomer.
Similar trolls
Parallels were soon found in the ‘Mohammedali’ remarks of Industries Minister E.P. Jayarajan, who claimed on live TV that the African-American boxer was a Malayali when a news channel had sought his response after the Olympic gold medalist’s death.
However, Mr. Firos’s supporters were quick to point out the theory which claimed that the Mahatma had indeed adopted Feroze Gandhi ahead of his marriage with Indira and bequeathed him his surname.
Firos’ clarification
The MYL leader also came up with a clarification, accepting his mistake and saying that he had enjoyed the social media trolling.
