Rahul Gandhi on Sunday tweeted that Narendra Modi was the King of Gods — “Surender” — but several social-media followers of the Prime Minister read it as “surrender” and questioned the spelling skills of the Congress MP.

The army of faithful pounced on Rahul after he tweeted on Sunday morning: “Narendra Modi is actually Surender Modi.”

Surender, a common Indian name, translates as “King of Gods”.

Himanta Biswa Sarma, the most powerful BJP leader in Assam, could barely contain his fury. “Mr @RahulGandhi —You’re so exasperated you can’t even spell correctly! And surrendering has been hallmark of Gandhi-Nehru family. In 1962, Assam was almost given away by Pt Nehru. When Chinese Army had captured Bomdila, Nehru said, ‘My heart goes out to people of Assam’. Shame,” Biswa Sarma fumed.

Amit Malviya, the BJP’s IT cell chief, did not refer to any spelling mistake but included the word “surrendered” in his tweet. “Rahul Gandhi’s constant attack on the PM is nothing but an attempt to whitewash sins of Nehru, his great grandfather, who surrendered kms of Indian territory to China…,” Malviya tweeted.

As Modi supporter after Modi supporter read “Surender” as “surrender” and asked the Congress MP to at least learn to spell correctly, Twitterati chuckled.

“No idea if this is what he intended, but I love the fact that @RahulGandhi’s tweet provoked the knickerati enough to mock him with, ‘Hey, check your spellings. It’s #SurrenderModi not #SurenderModi.’ Haha, okay, thank you for the clarification and confirmation,” wrote one Twitter user.

Congress social media head Rohan Gupta tweeted: “Now bhakts are also accepting it should be Surrender Modi, not Surender Modi.”

Modi’s followers readily jumped to the conclusion that “surrender” is the correct word, probably because they are as confused as most Indians about what Modi was trying to convey through his speech at an all-party meeting on Friday.

Congress sources agreed that the “mistake” could not have been anything but intended and, as expected, the troll army had walked into the trap.