Congress’s Shama Mohamed adds communal colour to Rohit Sharma row

New Delhi: As Indian cricket team battles its way through the ICC Champions Trophy 2025 in Dubai, Congress party spokesperson Dr. Shama Mohamed chose to target captain Rohit Sharma, seemingly intent on demoralising the team at a critical moment.

Mohamed, on Sunday, targeted Sharma with derogatory remarks, calling him “fat” and “the most unimpressive captain India has ever had” in a now-deleted social media post.

After the uproar, she deleted her crass comments but shamelessly pivoted to a Hindu-Muslim angle in response to the outrage.

The timing of her outburst — smack in the middle of a high-stakes international tournament — appears deliberate, given that she is neither naive nor a newcomer to politics.

The timing of Mohamed’s attack also raises uncomfortable questions about Congress’s political playbook.

Has she taken a leaf out of Rahul Gandhi’s book, who has a well-documented history of targeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his international engagements? Just as Gandhi has criticised Modi’s global visits with domestic jabs, Mohamed’s ill-timed assault on Sharma seems to follow a similar pattern of striking when the target is occupied on a larger stage.

Mohamed’s outburst during the Champions Trophy mirrors this tactic.

Congress scrambled to distance itself, with media head Pawan Khera stating, “Dr. Shama Mohamed’s remarks do not reflect the party’s position. She has been asked to delete the posts and exercise greater caution.”

Mohamed complied, deleting the comments, but remained defiant, telling ANI, “It was a generic tweet about fitness, not body-shaming. I have the right to speak in a democracy.”

In attempting to defend the indefensible, Mohamed gave the controversy a communal colour by dragging in Mohammed Shami’s trolling during the 2023 World Cup tournament.

The Congress spokesperson can also be heard trying to sow division within the team mid-tournament with her odd comparison between Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma.

Listen in:

#WATCH | On her comment on Indian Cricket team captain Rohit Sharma, Congress leader Shama Mohammed says, "It was a generic tweet about the fitness of a sportsperson. It was not body-shaming. I always believed a sportsperson should be fit, and I felt he was a bit overweight, so I… pic.twitter.com/OBiLk84Mjh

— ANI (@ANI) March 3, 2025

Her defense has done little to quell the outrage, with critics arguing that targeting a captain mid-tournament is neither generic nor democratic—it’s reckless.

However, Mohamed has been reduced to reposting a few like-minded posts as part of a face-saving exercise, besides giving the controversy a communal hue.