The disparaging remarks by the Maldivian ministers have drawn flak in India, with many celebrities calling to explore domestic tourist destinations instead.
India has read the riot act to the Maldives after three junior ministers of Mohamed Muizzu's government made derogatory remarks against Prime Minister Narendra Modi following his visit to Lakshadweep islands. This morning, the Maldives envoy to India Ibrahim Shaheeb was summoned to the ministry of external affairs and Male was demarched for the unsavory conduct of now-suspended three junior ministers.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
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While Shaheeb got a dressing down at the MEA, the Indian High Commissioner to Male told the Maldivian foreign minister on Sunday that such remarks on PM Modi were totally uncalled and unacceptable to India. While Mohamed Muizzu, who is currently seeking funds in Beijing, suspended his three junior ministers, India has made it very clear that it would not satisfied with a rap on the knuckles of the errant junior ministers.
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A major controversy erupted on Sunday over the derogatory remarks against PM Modi by Maldivian ministers on social media platform X.
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A major controversy erupted on Sunday over the derogatory remarks against PM Modi by Maldivian ministers on social media platform X.
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The Maldivian foreign ministry said the government is aware of "derogatory remarks" on social media platforms against foreign leaders and that the personal views do not represent its position.
"The government of Maldives is aware of derogatory remarks on social media platforms against foreign leaders and high-ranking individuals. These opinions are personal and do not represent the views of the government of Maldives," the Maldivian foreign ministry said in a statement on Sunday.
The controversy erupted ahead of Muizzu's five-day state visit to China. Muizzu won the election last year riding on the ‘India Out’ campaign, pledging to remove Indian troops stationed in the archipelago for rescue and relief operations.
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.
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