Prakash Javadekar Tears Into Financial Times for Terming Armed Mob at JNU as ‘Nationalist’

Union Minister Prakash Javadekar on Monday slammed the Financial Times for referring to the masked mob that brutally attacked students and teachers of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) on Sunday as ‘nationalist’ mob.

Titled ‘Nationalist mob goes on rampage at secular university in Delhi’, a story filed by Financial Times reported on the unprecedented violence inside the JNU campus, in which 20 people, including JNU Students' Union president Aishe Ghosh, were injured.

“Dear @FT, Technologists across the world would be eager to get the tech possessed by you, which helps decipher that a masked mob is ‘nationalist’. Also, all universities & institutions in our country are secular,” the minister of Environment, Forest and Climate Change tweeted on Monday.

In another tweet laced with sarcasm, he said, “I know it’s a bit too much for you to understand India, but here’s an effort: Stop predicting the breaking apart of India at every possible chance you get. India is a diverse democracy and it has always assimilated all differences to emerge stronger.”

Blaming Sunday’s violence inside the premier university on the opposition Congress, Aam Aadmi Party and Left parties, the senior BJP leader said, "I condemn yesterday's violence in JNU. Few elements along with a group from Congress, AAP and Communists deliberately wants to create an atmosphere of violence across India and particularly in universities. There should be an inquiry against them."

The JNU administration and political leaders, cutting across political lines, had condemned the attack on students and urged the police to take action against the perpetrators.

Slams British Daily over Report on JNU

Meanwhile, Javadekar also came down heavily on a British daily on Monday for referring to the masked mob that attacked JNU students and teachers as "nationalists" and asked it to stop predicting India's disintegration at every opportunity. In a series of tweets slamming the British daily, Javadekar said, "I know it's a bit too much for you to understand India, but here's an effort: Stop predicting the breaking apart of India at every possible chance you get. India is a diverse democracy and it has always assimilated all differences to emerge stronger."

Tagging the British daily, he said in another tweet: "Technologists across the world would be eager to get the tech possessed by you, which helps decipher that a masked mob is 'nationalist'. Also, all universities & institutions in our country are secular."

A report in the British daily on the Sunday night attack on Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) students and teachers here appeared with the title: "Nationalist mob goes on rampage at secular university in Delhi".

Javadekar, also the Union minister for information and broadcasting, attached with one of his tweets an image of another report by the British daily headlined as "Social unrest in India as climate change hits output of onions".

"I hate to break it to you, but so shallow is your reporting and understanding of India, that the last time you predicted social unrest in India was over rising onion prices!," he wrote on Twitter.