TNI Bureau: Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP and former Union Minister Anurag Thakur has drawn flak over “first space traveller” remark during a school event.

While addressing the students at an event in Himachal Pradesh, Anurag Thakur on Saturday asked the students “Antriksh main yatra karne wala pehla kaun tha? (Who was the first space traveller?).”

Answering to this, the student replied in one voice, “Neil Armstrong!” However, the five-time parliamentarian said, “Mujhe toh lagta hai Hanuman ji the (I think it was Lord Hanuman).”

He further said, “We still see ourselves in the now. As long as we do not know our thousands of years’ old tradition, knowledge, culture, we will remain the same as the British have shown us.”

“So, I would like to request the principal and all of you to think out of the textbooks and take a look at our nation, our traditions, our knowledge,” he added.

पवनसुत हनुमान जी…पहले अंतरिक्ष यात्री। pic.twitter.com/WO5pG2hAqT

— Anurag Thakur (@ianuragthakur) August 23, 2025

Meanwhile, Thakur’s statement has been criticized by the social media users including DMK MP Kanimozhi. “

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,” Kanimozhi wrote on her X handle.

“India’s future lies in nurturing curiosity, not confusing fact with fable,” she added.

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,… https://t.co/lPgyMkt9ZN

— Kanimozhi (கனிமொழி) (@KanimozhiDMK) August 24, 2025