Defence Research and Development Organisation Chairman G Satheesh Reddy on Sunday criticised Pakistani politicians for ridiculing India’s moon mission, and said they probably cannot understand the complexity of the effort.

“Chandrayaan is a very complex mission,” Reddy told ANI. “This type of complex mission can be appreciated by those people who have also taken up such missions. The people who haven’t done anything of this class, I don’t think they can appreciate and probably they cannot understand the complexity of this mission.”

Reddy also praised Prime Minister Narendra Modi for hugging Indian Space Research Organisation chief K Sivan to console him, and said it was a “great morale booster”.

On Saturday, Pakistan’s Science and Technology Minister Fawad Hussain had used the hashtag #IndiaFailed on Twitter to mock India’s failure in maintaining communication with the Vikram lander as it descended on the lunar surface. On being criticised by Indian users, he wondered if Pakistan had asked India to spend a huge amount of money on the mission.

Hussain also repeatedly spelled India as “Endia” in his tweets. He said India should focus on its poverty instead of “wasting money on insane missions” like Chandrayaan. He even called the lander a “toy”. Hussain’s tweets were criticised in Pakistan as well.

Union minister Ram Vilas Paswan told ANI that the biggest achievement of the Narendra Modi government was that Pakistan was rattled. “Even their ministers are rattled,” Paswan said. “Let it [Pakistan] say anything it wants.”

Another Union minister, Giriraj Singh, told the news agency: “We [India and Pakistan] both got Independence together and they separated after fighting with us. They should not worry about the success or failure of our Chandrayaan-2 mission, we have reached the moon but they are still stuck with exporting donkeys.”

Pakistan has the third largest population of donkeys in the world, after China and Ethiopia.

Now, follow and debate the day’s most significant stories on Scroll Exchange.