The BJP on Tuesday slammed Minister of State for External Affairs Shashi Tharoor for describing the recent attacks on Indian students in Australia as a "domestic matter" of Down Under, saying "It is not a simple law and order problem."

Referring to the minister's Monday remark in Kerala, saffron leader Murli Manohar Joshi said, "It is hard to understand how the minister could describe the attacks on Indian students as a domestic matter of Australia. It is not a simple law and order problem.

"Racial prejudice and violence resulting from there can not be dismissed as a country's internal matter. He (Tharoor) needs to remember that even Mahatma Gandhi had begun his political activism by raising a banner of revolt against racial prejudice in a far-off land (South Africa)," he said.

Tharoor, the Thiruvananthapuram MP, had told in his constituency, "I think that this (racial attacks) must be seen principally as a domestic issue for Australia to deal with, within their own society, rather than as a bilateral problem between Australia and India."

But at the same time, he had said, India wanted to make it clear that when its students go abroad for study, they were not in any way put under danger. "But, very much, the responsibility is the Australian government's".