Who was the first person to travel to space? BJP MP Anurag Thakur’s answer to the question has sparked a storm of quips and memes.

At a National Space Day event in Una, Himachal Pradesh, Thakur had asked a group of students: “Who was the first person to travel to space?” The students responded in unison: “Neil Armstrong!”

“I think it was Hanuman ji,” Thakur replied with a smile, a video of the interaction later posted on his X handle showed.

The exchange ended up exposing two factual lapses. The students named Armstrong, the first human to walk on the Moon in 1969, not Yuri Gagarin, the Soviet cosmonaut who orbited Earth in 1961. And Thakur doubled down by suggesting “Hanuman ji” was the earliest space traveller.

Speaking at Shri Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya, Thakur urged teachers and students to “look beyond the textbooks given by the British,” pointing to India’s ancient knowledge systems.

The Opposition mocked and slammed Thakur’s answer.

“A member of parliament and former union minister asking school children who first set foot on the moon, and insisting that it was not Neil Armstrong but Hanuman, is deeply troubling. Science is not mythology. To mislead young minds in classrooms is an insult to knowledge, reason, and the spirit of scientific temper enshrined in our Constitution,” DMK MP Kanimozhi posted on X (on Twitter).

She wasn’t the only one. Congress leaders also joined in.

“Anurag Thakur should share the book supporting his remarks with his children and not send his children to English-medium schools,” Congress leader Udit Raj said.

Punjab Congress chief Amarinder Singh Raja Warring quipped: “Thankfully, Anurag ji did not say that Modi ji also went to space with Hanuman ji. Maybe Anurag Thakur himself went with Hanuman ji. These are the kinds of things Anurag Thakur can say; he speaks about anything.”

On social media too, the remark triggered multiple memes and fact-checks.

Some users pointed out that even by mythological accounts, Lord Hanuman wasn’t the first space traveller. “The first space traveller was Hiranyaksha, who hid the Earth,” one user quipped.

Others criticised Thakur for not correcting the children’s wrong answers. “Instead of correcting the children, you told them Hanuman was the first space traveller with that frivolous smile. It was Yuri Gagarin. Stop playing with the innocent minds of children,” one post read.

“This is not education, this is brainwashing. Turning classrooms into comedy clubs & science into mythology,” another said.

Several posts also mocked the episode with questions: “Will Anurag Thakur take responsibility that they would get marks in the exam with this answer?”

Others tried humour through mythology itself.

“Sanatan existed before even space was created by Brahma Ji, so many Hindu Gods must’ve traversed through space & things before it. By bringing Hanuman Ji into this rat race of who went to space first, Anurag Thakur has insulted Hanuman Ji by comparing him to human endeavors!” one X user wrote.

The “double rot,” as some described it, lay in both the students’ incorrect answer and the MP’s response.