- Saturday, November 23, 2024
The hashtag #Melodi is widely circulated online involving the two leaders after it was popularised by the Italian PM at the COP28 summit in Dubai last December where she took a selfie with her Indian counterpart.
By: Shubham Ghosh
MEMES involving Indian prime minister Narendra Modi and his Italian counterpart Giorgia Meloni are not new. They gained popularity during the G20 summit held in New Delhi last year and reappeared during the recently held general elections.
A hashtag “Melodi” combining the names of the two leaders also occasionally trend on social media, jokingly depicting romance between them, and they were particularly doing the rounds this week after the Indian PM visited Italy for the G7 summit.
Last December, Meloni, who is 27 years younger than Modi and is serving as the prime minister since October 2022, used the hashtag on a selfie she posted with Modi after meeting him on the sidelines of the COP28 summit in Dubai, UAE.
“Good friends at COP28 #Melodi,” the Italian prime minister wrote.
However, India saw the first political reaction to the ‘bonhomie’ on Friday (14) as an opposition politician and parliamentarian Priyanka Chaturvedi slammed the memes circulating online calling them “absolutely cringe” and said the jokes involving the two leaders reflected the “poor” level of humour prevalent in India.
“This PM Giorgia Meloni and PM Modi memes have gone too far, they are absolutely cringe and also poor reflection of the level of humour that prevails in India. Just saying,” Chaturvedi, who represents Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) in the Rajya Sabha or the Upper House of the parliament, wrote in a post on X.
Read: Modi meets Zelenskky on G7 sidelines: Way to peace is through ‘dialogue, diplomacy’
This PM Giorgia Meloni and PM Modi memes have gone too far, they are absolutely cringe and also poor reflection of the level of humour that prevails in India.
Just saying.— Priyanka Chaturvedi?? (@priyankac19) June 14, 2024
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Modi was given a warm welcome by Meloni at the ongoing G7 summit where she greeted world leaders with an Indian ‘namaste’, including the Indian PM, who also reciprocated with the same.
Read: Modi meets Sunak and other leaders at G7
The Indian leader, who will participate in the G7 Outreach Session, met a number of top leaders on the sidelines of the summit, including his British counterpart Rishi Sunak, French president Emmanuel Macron and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy. He was also set to meet US president Joe Biden, Japanese PM Fumio Kishida, and German chancellor Olaf Scholz, besides the Pope.
