Twitter Battles

Recently when India rejected the new Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan's peace overture, he responded via twitter making a rather snide remark at Modi 'all my life I have come across small men occupying big offices.....'.

As he is pretty new in office this remark seems to be particularly harsh and a personal attack on Modi.
It may appear that Imran may have made this remark as an instinctive angry response. Some people have remarked that by making this statement he has closed all doors for peace talks etc. But now he is too experienced in Politics to do that. I think this direct attack on Modi is very well thought out.

Imran knows very well that politics like Cricket is a mental game. He must be closely observing Modi in office for the last 4 years. Clearly Modi and BJP/RSS have no intention of appearing to be trying for peace between India-Pakistan (or to bring any normalcy to Jammu & Kashmir). It suits them to be hawkish & hostile towards Pakistan & also J&K. Modi will use his anti Pak & the so called muscular J&K policy in the 2019 elections.

Hence Imran knows that Modi will not take any steps towards peace, talks etc. It doesn't augur well for his domestic constituency.
Modi & BJP consistently use Pakistan to score points at home and also to camouflage their anti-Muslim agenda ('Pakistan chale jao'). So Imran would have calculated that if Modi can use Pakistan for his domestic agenda then why can't he use Modi for his domestic audience. By so overtly calling Modi a 'small man', he is showing to his dometic audience that he can take on Modi head on. He will not take a backward step. In fact, as both countries are nuclear powers, he knows all too well that nothing much can happen beyond these sparring matches on twitter & border skirmishes. They are happening anyway.

As a Cricket captain Imran always was able to punch above his weight by his overall aggressive & positive demeanour. I think he is doing the same as Prime Minister.

It will be interesting to see how Modi responds to this slight. He is not used to being called a 'small man' so publicly by a fellow PM. That too the Pakistani PM. Imran's tweet has been reported internationally. He will retort in some way.
He may make fun of Imran in his campaign speeches in India.
But Modi will find that Imran is not easy to 'fix'. He will keep taking him on.