Today, an opinion piece focused on India’s Minister of External Affairs Sushma Swaraj, was published in the Times of India. Written by Non Resident Indian columnist of Wall Street Journal Sadanand Dhume, the piece focused on how Sushma Swaraj’s tenure as the MEA, was “largely forgettable”.

Minister Sushma Swaraj took note of the highly critical piece, and responded in her own style. She Tweeted the article from her social media account, with a simple message: “Let Indian taxpayers respond”. The tweet was then pinned to the top of her profile, ensuring that no one would miss it:



While the minister took the bull by its horns, the specific charges in the article were rebutted and torn to shreds, point by point, on social media. R Sriram, Associate Editor, Economic Times, chose to take to twitter to poke holes into Dhume’s commentary. In a thread, he demolished arguments made by Dhume, and by the end had managed to make Dhume’s article seem like a half-baked desperate attempt to attack Swaraj.

In his article, Dhume had bracketed former MEA Jaswant Singh as a great foreign minister, unlike Swaraj. R Sriram analysed this argument:

At one point in the article, Dhume had labelled Pakistan’s former Foreign Minister Sahabzada Yaqub Khan as “the greatest South Asian foreign minister”. R Sriram responded to this as well:

Dhume’s next argument was particularly amusing. Over the years, Sushma Swaraj has bailed out so many social media users who have approached her for help using twitter. But Dhume has a problem with her Twitter exploits as well.

Besides the above detailed take-down, many other social media users found glaring flaws in Dhume’s piece:



Talk about being disconnected. We hope Dhume takes the criticism from social media users as well the Minister took criticism from him.