Washington, Nov 14 (PTI) President Donald Trump celebrated Diwali at a White House ceremony but omitted mentioning Hindus in his Twitter greeting, and again in a corrected tweet after the gaffe was pointed out by outraged netizens.

Trump hosted Diwali celebrations in the historic Roosevelt Room of the White House which was attended by prominent Indian-Americans, Indian-origin administration and diplomatic officials.

Diwali was celebrated across the world on November 7.

In his first tweet, he forgot to greet the Hindus, for whom Diwali is the biggest festival in the calendar.

"Today, we gathered for Diwali, a holiday observed by Buddhists, Sikhs, and Jains throughout the United States & around the world. Hundreds of millions of people have gathered with family & friends to light the Diya and to mark the beginning of a New Year," Trump said in a tweet as he posted along with a YouTube link of the White House event.

The alert netizens were quick in identifying that he missed greeting the 'Hindus'.

"It is a major Hindu holiday," CNN's Congressional correspondent Manu Raju said in a tweet. Trump soon deleted his first tweet, and replaced it with another one but again repeated the error.

"Today, we gathered for Diwali, a holiday observed by Buddhists, Sikhs, and Jains throughout the United States & around the world. Hundreds of millions of people have gathered with family & friends to light the Diya and to mark the beginning of a New Year," Trump said in his second tweet which again missed mentioning the Hindus.

"So after initially not including Hindus in his first Diwali tweet, Trump deletes that tweet and reposts another message. And still leaves out Hindus...,” Raju said, as he was joined by several others on the social media.

Soon, the president deleted his second tweet and came up with the third one.

"It was my great honour to host a celebration of Diwali, the Hindu Festival of Lights, in the Roosevelt Room at the @WhiteHouse this afternoon. Very, very special people!” Trump said in his third tweet.

Responding to questions on the series of tweets by the president and the criticism that he did not mention the Hindus in his tweets, White House Deputy Press Secretary Raj Shah said: "Manu (Raju) is being very unfair.

"The tweet took his words from the speech verbatim. In that same speech he opened with commemorating Diwali as the Hindu celebration of lights. So when there was a critique, he tweeted the opening line as well. Totally manufactured controversy".

"President Trump leaves out Hindus in Diwali tweets," Time magazine said in an article.

Trump had also mentioned Hindus in his November 7 Diwali greetings.

"Known as the Festival of lights, Diwali is a joyous and spiritual time marked by many Hindus, Sikhs, Jains and Buddhists,” the president had said in his Diwali greetings last week.

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)