Did he do it because Ayatollah Khomeini wrote poetry and signed them Hendi?
Or did he do it to play on Iranian fears of some sort of British conspiracy?
Or another reason?
Khomeini's paternal grandfather had moved back from a Shia-ruled state in India, where ancestors had settled from Iran, to the town of Khomein in the 1830s.
The Shah likely made the references to try and play up Khomeini as a putative foreigner, and to shore up nationalist support against Khomeini.