Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on June 25 hit back at former US President Barack Obama. In an interview with CNN, Barack Obama said that India must protect its minorities, or it would ‘pull apart’. “If I had a conversation with PM Modi who I know well, part of my argument would be that if you do not protect the rights of ethnic minorities in India, then there is a strong possibility that India at some point starts pulling apart. We have seen what happens when you start getting those kind of large internal conflicts,” Former US President Barack Obama had said in an interview with CNN. To his comments, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman retaliated and gave a scathing reply.