In less than an hour, six hundred comments had flooded in, many criti- cal of the Indian minister and a few saying, “Let the devils discriminate, we are not them”. The situation was clearly volatile and the Indian envoy in the UAE, Ambassador Pavan Kapoor had tweeted on April 20, “India and UAE share the value of non-discrimination on any ground. Discrimination is against our moral fabric and the Rule of Law. Indian nationals in the UAE should always remember this.”

The day after Naqvi appeared to be clueless in New Delhi and seemed to have grossly underestimated public sentiment building up in the Middle East. What added fuel to the fire were old tweets of BJP poster boy and MP Tejasvi Surya. In 2015 he had gleefully quoted a Canadian of Pakistani origin saying, “95% of Arab women have never had an orgasm in the last few hundred years”. Around the same time, he also tweeted, “A temple in Abu Dhabi. Next in Saudi? # HinduAwakening #Modi”.