India blocked the documentary questioning PM Narendra Modi’s role in the 2002 riots using emergency powers.
A BBC documentary questioning Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s leadership during the 2002 Gujarat riots was blocked by India’s right-wing government using emergency powers.
The government called the two-part BBC documentary India: The Modi Question a “propaganda piece” and ordered Twitter and YouTube to remove more than 50 messages and prohibit video uploads.
On Tuesday, authorities allegedly shut electricity and internet to the students’ union office that organized the documentary screening at one of India’s top institutions. Students watching the video in India were stoned, according to media accounts.
Opposition leaders, journalists, and activists resist the government order by sharing BBC documentary links on social media.
Gujarat 2002—what happened?
Modi became Gujarat’s chief minister in late 2001 to end Bharatiya Janata Party infighting (BJP).
Until then, he was a senior member of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the BJP’s far-right ideological mentor founded in 1925 along European fascist lines. India’s 200 million Muslims will be second-class citizens in the RSS’s Hindu state.
59 Hindu pilgrims returning from Ayodhya in Uttar Pradesh died in a train fire in February 2002. The state government lead by Modi claimed Muslim vendors at Godhra station burnt the train, while a 2006 federal government inquiry said the fire was unintentional.
Hindu mobs attacked Muslim neighborhoods in Gujarat after the Godhra event. Gujarat became one of India’s most religiously polarized states after over 2,000 Muslims were slain and scores of women raped in one of India’s worst religious massacres.
The US banned Modi from traveling, and many foreign nations, including the UK, stopped communicating with him.
Modi became “Hindu Hridaysamrat” (the monarch of Hindu hearts) and rose in the RSS and BJP after the massacre. He ruled Gujarat till 2014, when he became India’s 15th prime minister.
The BBC film’s subject?
The 59-minute documentary argues that Gujarat chief minister Modi instructed the police to ignore the days-long violence.
According to a previously classified British foreign ministry memo, Modi “directed them not to intervene” in Muslim attacks.
The violence was “politically motivated” to “purge Muslims from Hindu areas,” it added.
“Narendra Modi is directly responsible” for the riots, it found.
BBC stated the documentary was “rigorously researched according to highest editorial standards” after India banned it.
The documentary series covers India’s Hindu majority and Muslim minority conflicts and PM Narendra Modi’s politics. In recent years, this has garnered tremendous publicity and interest in India and around the world,” it stated.
The British broadcaster stated the film had “responses from persons in the BJP” and a “vast range of perspectives, witnesses and specialists”.
“We offered the Indian government a right to reply to the matters presented in the series – it declined,” it stated.
Why Modi wants the film not watched
Modi has frequently denied failing to stop Gujarat riots.
In 2012, a Supreme Court-appointed special investigative committee concluded in a 541-page report that Modi and others were not responsible for the violence.
The BJP nominated Modi for prime minister the next year. He returned to parliament in 2019 with a larger majority after winning the 2014 general elections.
Since 2014, Modi’s BJP and other RSS-affiliated parties have intensified their Hindu supremacist assault against India’s largest minority, Muslims.
Thus, a foreign media organization’s prohibition on a Gujarat riots film is consistent with the government’s tactics to silence critics.
Modi followers on social media are labeling the BBC program “colonial” and “white” propaganda.
At a news conference last week, India’s foreign ministry spokesman Arindam Bagchi remarked, “The bias and lack of objectivity and honestly lingering colonial attitude are obviously visible.”
However, Aligarh Muslim University history professor Mohammad Sajjad told Al Jazeera he is “surprised as to why shouldn’t Modi want Indians to watch” the BBC video.
He called the government prohibition “a perplexing contradiction” because the federal home minister had declared Muslims were taught a lesson in Gujarat in 2002.
“Yet, considering that Modi is genuinely peeved with the BBC program, the only possible reason could be that he wants to create up a specific kind of image before the world.”
India’s ban: reactions?
“Wounds heal and human rights duties are honored when there is a sincere commitment to justice and reform. “Instead, BJP supporters have glorified men convicted of gang rape and murder in the 2002 riots,” HRW stated on Monday.
“BJP ideology has penetrated the court system and the media, permitting party members to intimidate, harass, and attack religious minorities, particularly Muslims, with impunity,” the rights group warned.
“Indian officials and BJP supporters have worked hard to change his image,” HRW stated.
“Internationally, Indian diplomats fight back vigorously at any allegation of Modi’s involvement in significant human rights abuses,” it continued.
HRW said Modi has “sought to direct international engagement with India towards development and strategic partnerships”.
“But India’s image would be better served if the government made greater effort defending the rights of all Indians—and those desiring to bring these issues to public attention,” it added.
The BBC program and its clips were blocked from social media by Modi’s emergency information technology regulations.
On Monday, the Committee to Protect Journalists claimed the directive “flagrantly defies the country’s stated commitment to democratic ideals”.
Academic Sajjad believes the documentary scandal will assist the BJP “gain a reaffirmed and renewed consolidation of ‘Hindu’ support to it”.
