The Centre on Wednesday took the extraordinary step of schooling “celebrities” in social media etiquette after singer Rihanna and climate activist Greta Thunberg tweeted about the farmers’ protest as well as the Internet ban and drew global attention to the prolonged movement and the clampdown.

The pushback came from the external affairs ministry that issued a lengthy political statement complete with two hashtags — “IndiaTogether” and “IndiaAgainstPropaganda”.

The hashtags soon became some sort of a Tebbit test or loyalty test. Many movie actors and cricketers, some of whom had remained silent when several farmers died in the biting cold, dutifully posted tweets with the two hashtags.

Sachin Tendulkar, Virat Kohli, Anil Kumble, Shikhar Dhawan, Lata Mangeshkar, Akshay Kumar, Ajay Devgn and Karan Johar were among those who tweeted with the hashtags coined by the ministry, urging people to stand united and not fall for propaganda.

After enumerating the measures taken by the government to assuage the farmers, the external affairs ministry said in its statement: “Before rushing to comment on such matters, we would urge that the facts be ascertained, and a proper understanding of the issues at hand be undertaken.

“The temptation of sensationalist social media hashtags and comments, especially when resorted to by celebrities and others, is neither accurate nor responsible.”

The statement was signed off with the two hashtags.

Barbadian singer Rihanna, who is the fourth most followed person on Twitter with 101.1 million followers, had on Tuesday night posted a CNN report on India shutting down the Internet around the national capital in view of the protests and tweeted: “Why aren’t we talking about this?! #FarmersProtest.”

At the time of tweeting, she had around 100.9 million followers and that number grew over the next 24 hours despite the consequent name-calling by the Indian government’s ecosystem.

The Internet ban that has been in place across Haryana since the weekend was on Wednesday lifted in all but five districts.

A few hours after Rihanna’s tweet, Thunberg tweeted the same CNN report with the comment: “We stand in solidarity with the #FarmersProtest in India.”

She followed it up with another tweet in which she posted a document that provided a list of actions being planned globally to garner support for the movement, described as the “largest protest in human history”.

This document was subsequently deleted.

By Wednesday morning, several others including US Vice-President Kamala Harris’s niece Meena Harris, lawmakers, singers and former adult entertainment star Mia Khalifa had tweeted on the farmers’ protest, giving it a visibility far greater than brought to it by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s public support for the movement in its early days.

The external affairs ministry’s statement raised eyebrows on multiple counts. It appeared more political than diplomatic and chose to react to individual celebrities while having kept quiet over comments by elected lawmakers in different world capitals.

After telling Canada last year that Trudeau’s comments could jeopardise relations, the ministry had maintained a studied silence on other remarks on the protest, letting its missions do the fire-fighting.

The statement claimed that Parliament had passed the “reformist legislation” after a “full debate and discussion”, although one of the main contentions of the farmers and the Opposition is that the agriculture bills were steamrolled through Parliament without proper consultation and vote.

Also, on a day when one of the biggest mahapanchayats was organised in Jind, Haryana, in solidarity with the farmers and their demand for the repeal of the farm laws, the ministry claimed that a “very small section of farmers in parts of India have some reservations about these reforms”.

Apart from Punjab and Haryana, the protests have spread to western Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan, and farmers from as far as Kerala have joined the movement at Delhi’s borders.

The statement drew attention to the talks held with the farmer unions and the offer made by the government to suspend the implementation of the laws — already stayed by the Supreme Court. It asserted that “vested interest groups” were trying to derail the talks.

The statement referred to the chaos on Republic Day during the farmers’ tractor rally and the desecration of Mahatma Gandhi’s statues in some parts of the world, when some of the government’s own fellow travellers celebrate his assassin Nathuram Godse.

About law enforcement during the protests, the ministry said the police had shown the “utmost restraint” and claimed that hundreds of men and women serving in the force had been physically attacked and in some instances seriously wounded.

Reacting to the external affairs ministry’s statement, retired diplomat K.C. Singh tweeted: “As a former spokesman of MEA I feel sad at its lack of accuracy. It has obviously been drafted elsewhere & issued under instructions.”

The Samyukta Kisan Morcha, the banner under which the protests are going on, in a related statement acknowledged the support of international personalities to the movement.

“On the one hand it is a matter of pride that eminent personalities of the world are showing sensitivity towards the cause of farmers while on the other hand, it is unfortunate that the government of India is not understanding the pain of the farmers and some people are even calling peaceful farmers terrorists,” it said.