NEW DELHI (AP) — Days after India blocked a BBC
documentary that examines Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s role during 2002
anti-Muslim riots and banned people from sharing it online, authorities were
scrambling to halt screenings of the program at colleges and restrict clips of
it on social media, a move that has been decried by critics as an assault on
press freedom.
The two-part documentary “India: The Modi
Question” has not been broadcast in India by the BBC, but India’s federal
government blocked it over the weekend and banned people from sharing clips on
social media, citing emergency powers under its information technology laws.
Twitter and YouTube complied with the request and removed many links to the
documentary.
The ban set off a wave of criticism from
opposition parties and rights groups that slammed it as an attack against press
freedom. It also drew more attention to the documentary, sparking scores of
social media users to share clips of the movie on WhatsApp, Telegram and
Twitter.
Press freedom in India has declined in recent
years and the country fell eight places, to 150 out of 180 countries, in last
year’s Press Freedom Index published by Reporters Without Borders. It accuses
Modi’s government of silencing criticism on social media, particularly on
Twitter.
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Senior leaders of the governing party have
denied this, even as Modi’s government has regularly pressured Twitter to
restrict or ban content it deems critical of the prime minister or his party.
Last year, it threatened to arrest Twitter staff in the country over their
refusal to ban accounts run by critics after implementing sweeping new
regulations for technology and social media companies.
Meanwhile, the ban prompted critics of Twitter
to accuse the company of censorship.
Twitter CEO Elon Musk tweeted back to one such
accusation “First I’ve heard. It is not possible for me to fix every aspect of
Twitter worldwide overnight, while still running Tesla and SpaceX, among other
things.”
The ban on the BBC documentary comes after a
proposal from the government to give its Press Information Bureau and other
“fact-checking” agencies powers to take down news deemed “fake or false” from
digital platforms. The Editors Guild of India urged the government to withdraw
the proposal, saying such a change would be akin to censorship.
On Wednesday, tensions over the issue flared in
the Indian capital, New Delhi, where a student group at Jamia Millia University
said it planned to screen the banned documentary. That prompted dozens of
police equipped with tear gas and riot gear to gather outside campus gates.
Police, some in plain clothes, scuffled with
protesting students and detained at least half a dozen, who were taken away in
a van.
“This is the time for Indian youth to put up
the truth which everybody knows. We know what the prime minister is doing to
the society,” said Liya Shareef, 20, a geography student and member of the
student group Fraternity Movement.
Jawaharlal Nehru University in the capital cut
off power and the internet on its campus on Tuesday before the documentary was
scheduled to be screened by a students’ union. Authorities said it would
disturb peace on campus, but students nonetheless watched the documentary on
their laptops and mobile phones after sharing it on messaging services such as
Telegram and WhatsApp.
The documentary has caused a storm at other
Indian universities too.
Authorities at the University of Hyderabad, in
India’s south, began a probe after a student group showed the banned
documentary earlier this week. In the southern state of Kerala, workers from
Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party held demonstrations on Tuesday after some student
groups affiliated with rival political parties defied the ban and screened the
program.
The first part of the documentary, released
last week by the BBC for its U.K. audiences, revives the most controversial
episode of Modi’s political career when he was the chief minister of western
Gujarat state in 2002, when more than 1,000 people were killed in anti-Muslim
riots.
Modi has denied allegations that authorities
under his watch allowed and even encouraged the bloodshed, and the Supreme
Court said it found no evidence to prosecute him. Last year, it dismissed a
petition filed by a Muslim victim questioning Modi’s exoneration.
The first part of the BBC documentary relies on
interviews with victims of the riots, journalists and rights activists, who say
Modi looked the other way during the riots. It cites, for the first time, a
secret British diplomatic investigation that concluded Modi was “directly
responsible” for the “climate of impunity.”
The movie includes testimony from then-British
Foreign Secretary Jack Straw that the British investigation found the violence
by Hindu nationalists aimed to “purge Muslims from Hindu areas” and had all the
“hallmarks of an ethnic cleansing.”
Suspicions that Modi quietly supported the
riots led the U.S., U.K. and E.U. to deny him a visa, a move that has since
been reversed.
India’s Foreign Ministry last week called the
documentary a “propaganda piece designed to push a particularly discredited
narrative” that lacks objectivity, and slammed it for “bias” and “a continuing
colonial mindset.” Kanchan Gupta, a senior adviser in the government’s Ministry
of Information and Broadcasting, denounced it as “anti-India garbage.”
The BBC in a statement said the documentary was
“rigorously researched” and involved a wide range of voices and opinions.
“We offered the Indian Government a right to
reply to the matters raised in the series — it declined to respond,” the
statement said.
The second part of the documentary, released
Tuesday in the U.K., “examines the track record of Narendra Modi’s government
following his re-election in 2019,” according to the film’s description on the
BBC website.
In recent years, India’s Muslim minority has
been at the receiving end of violence
from Hindu nationalists emboldened
by a prime minister who has said little about such attacks since he was first
elected in 2014.
Human Rights Watch said the ban on the
documentary reflects a broader crackdown on minorities under the Modi
government, which the rights group said has frequently invoked
draconian laws to muzzle criticism.
“You can ban, you can suppress the press, you
can control the institutions … but the truth is the truth. It has a nasty habit
of coming out,” Rahul Gandhi, a leader of the opposition Congress party, told
reporters Tuesday.
Mahua Moitra, a lawmaker from the Trinamool
Congress political party, on Tuesday tweeted a new link to the documentary
after a previous one was taken down. “Good, bad, or ugly — we decide. Govt
doesn’t tell us what to watch,” Moitra said in her tweet.
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