Indian opposition parties can’t believe their luck that even before the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi completes one year in office on May 26 their cause is being helped by none other than Modi himself.

Moreover, the opposition has a new ally which had almost completely deserted it during last year’s general elections and had overwhelmingly favored Modi: The social media.

Time and again opposition parties, particularly the Congress, which has ruled India for almost 59 out of nearly 68 years since independence, have reminded Modi to be mindful of what he speaks during his foreign trips. And Modi has been a far more frequent flier abroad than any of his predecessors, traveling to 19 countries a week before he completes one year as the premier. His latest foreign trip to China, Mongolia and South Korea (May 14-19) has just ended.

Modi has made frequent jibes at the opposition during his foreign trips, a highly unusual and objectionable practice considering that his predecessors have seldom taken on their political rivals from foreign soil. While during his earlier three-nation trip to France, Germany and Canada last month he had made snide remarks against the Congress party and its leaders, in his just-concluded three-nation tour he has surpassed his own dubious record.

In China and South Korea, Modi made sweeping derogatory remarks aimed at tarnishing the image of all previous governments forgetting that his own party the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had ruled India for a period of six years from 1998 to 2004. He made these remarks while addressing Indian communities in Shanghai and Seoul.

In Shanghai (China) Modi said Indians were ashamed of being born in the country before his government came to power. “Earlier, you felt ashamed of being born Indian. Now you feel proud to represent the country. Indians abroad had all hoped for a change in government last year,” Modi said in Shanghai on May 16.

Two days later he not only echoed the same idea in Seoul but further elaborated his questionable thought. This is what he said: “There was a time when people used to say we don’t know what sins we committed in our past life that we were born in Hindustan (India). Is this any country, is this any government…we will leave... There was a time when people used to leave, businessmen used to say we can’t do business here. These people are ready to come back. The mood has changed.”

A livid Congress party, which had last month warned to mind his tongue on foreign soil and threatened to tail him with its observers during his foreign trips, grabbed yet another opportunity for a political kill after Modi repeated his shenanigans in Shanghai and Seoul. Senior Congress leader and former Cabinet minister Kapil Sibal said that “a wrong person has become India’s prime minister.”

Sibal played a clip of PM Modi’s speeches in Shanghai and Seoul at his press conference in New Delhi on May 19 and remarked thus: “We have never seen such low level and degraded politics in the country. Modi blows his own trumpet abroad. He speaks without thinking. It has become his habit.”

Not content with this, Sibal twisted the knife by saying that the people had made a mistake by choosing Modi as the premier. “You have made a wrong person the prime minister... Instead of focusing on main issues, Modi would say that his biggest achievement was to bring US President Barack Obama as the chief guest on Republic Day while farmers and small traders were suffering.”

Modi’s remarks triggered one of Twitter’s top trends, the hashtag #ModiInsultsIndia, through the day on May 19. But surprisingly by Tuesday evening this hashtag disappeared and was replaced by #ModiIndia’sPride, even though #ModiInsultsIndia continued to trend worldwide but not in India. Clearly the empire had struck back and spin doctors in the Modi government had seized control by Tuesday evening.

Twitteratis poured scorn and indignation over Modi for his intemperate remarks and cited a number of Indian achievements in the international arena in diverse fields to convey that a large number of Twitter users in India did not agree with Modi and his tactics.

A notable tweet in this context was by former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah who tweeted thus: “Born in England, choose to carry an Indian passport & no Mr PM I’ve never been embarrassed to show my passport anywhere, ever.”

The wheel has come full circle for Modi in less than a year. Around this time last year no one dared to castigate Modi on the social media. But now not only social media but also a large section of Indian media are increasingly coming up with anti-Modi sentiments and that too in unusually harsh language.

Modi refuses to acknowledge the fact that India is no longer in the middle of general elections and he is the prime minister, not a prime ministerial candidate contesting election.

Modi has become his own biggest enemy. He has given a new lease of life to the very opposition that he had single handedly decimated one year ago. The opposition parties cannot stop from grinning ear to ear.