Biden and Stalin -- not that one -- shake hands at G20

A Stalin shook hands with a US president for the first time in decades on the sidelines of the G20 summit in India at the weekend.

Rather than the long-dead former Soviet dictator, the guests at the all-vegetarian G20 gala dinner in New Delhi included the chief minister of India's Tamil Nadu state, M.K. Stalin, as well as US President Joe Biden.

M.K. Stalin was born in 1953, days before Joseph Stalin died and was named by his father after the Soviet leader.

The smiling Indian minister posted a picture of himself shaking hands with Biden at Saturday's dinner, with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi standing alongside.

But he refrained from making any historical references on X, formerly known as Twitter, captioning it simply: "Attended the #G20Dinner at Kaveri Table hosted by Hon'ble President of India."

Others were less restrained.

X user psychicsoul2 replied: "Amazing, a US president is meeting a Stalin after WW2."

The United States and the Soviet Union's World War II alliance rapidly broke down after the defeats of Germany and Japan, to be replaced by the Cold War.

India was officially non-aligned but leaned more towards the Soviet Union during the period, and Moscow remains by far its biggest arms supplier.

Russian monikers are not unheard of in India, particularly in the south, including both Tamil Nadu and neighbouring Kerala, which has elected Communist governments for much of the past six decades.

In 2021, a man named Engels married in Kerala with his friends Marx, Lenin and Ho Chi Minh looking on.

And a wedding in (M.K.) Stalin's state the same year saw Socialism married off in front of brothers Communism, Leninism and Marxism.