Links to BBC Documentary on Prime Minister Modi Erased by YouTube and Twitter
India;The Modi Question. BBC. Cover photo.
January 23, 2023*
On February 27, 2002, 59 Hindu pilgrims died in a fire, while traveling on a train in the Indian state of Gujarat. While some reports said the fire was arson by Muslim extremists, others said it was an accident.
Shortly thereafter, “mobs of Hindus rampage, rape, loot and kill in a spasm of violence that rages for more than two months. Mothers are skewered, children set afire and fathers hacked to pieces,” according to The New York Times. “About 1,000 people, mostly Muslims, are killed. Some 20,000 Muslim homes and businesses and 360 places of worship are destroyed, and roughly 150,000 people are displaced.”
Current Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was then the Chief Minister of Gujarat. He was “directly responsible” for the violence faced by Muslims, the British High Commission in India stated in a report to the British Government.
The disclosures from the report - which was previously unpublished - form key parts of a BBC documentary, India: the Modi Question. The first episode was broadcast in the United Kingdom last week; the second episode was broadcast this week.
The first episode tracks Modi’s first steps into politics, including his association with the right-wing Hindu organization Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, his rise through the ranks of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and his appointment as Chief Minister of Gujarat.
Modi is seen by both the United States and the United Kingdom “as an important bulwark against Chinese domination of Asia,” and has been courted as a key western ally, the BBC notes. Yet his rule has been “dogged by persistent allegations about the attitude of his government towards India’s Muslim population.” The Modi documentary series “examines the tensions between India's Hindu majority and Muslim minority and explores the politics of Mr. Modi in relation to those tensions," the BBC said in a statement.
There “were very serious claims that Mr. Modi had played a proactive part in pulling back police and in tacitly encouraging the Hindu extremists,” during the 2002 riots in Gujarat, Jack Straw, who was then British Foreign Secretary told the BBC. “That was a particularly egregious example of political involvement to prevent police from doing their job to protect the Hindus and the Muslims."
In August 2002, after the anti-Muslim riots in Gujarat, Haren Pandya, a minister in Modi’s Gujarat government, told Outlook India that Modi instructed senior bureaucrats and police officers to allow "people to vent their frustration and not come in the way of the Hindu backlash." In 2003, Pandya was killed in mysterious circumstances and the murder case is yet to be solved.
Sanjiv Bhatt, a former top Indian police official in Gujarat during 2002, made a similar allegation against Modi. In 2019, Bhatt was jailed for life.because one of the more than 150 people he arrested, during a riot in 1989, later died in hospital after being released.
Officials of Modi’s government as well as the ruling BJP have criticized the BBC documentary. "It makes us wonder about the purpose of this exercise and the agenda behind it," Arindam Bagchi, a spokesperson for the Indian Foreign Ministry told the media. "This is a propaganda piece designed to push a particular discredited narrative. The bias, the lack of objectivity, and a continuing colonial mindset, is blatantly visible," he added.
Modi has denied the allegations. In 2002, in a rare media interview, he told a BBC reporter that her information was “misguided” and “garbage” propaganda spread by opponents of the BJP. “You Britishers should not teach us human rights…one area where I was very, very weak that was how to handle the media.”
Last week, the Indian government used emergency powers to ban YouTube, Twitter, and other media platforms from sharing links to what a government spokesperson described as a “hateful propaganda” video. The platforms, which view India as their largest potential business market, obliged and deleted links to the BBC documentary not just in India but all over the world.
The BBC defended the Modi documentary stating it was "rigorously researched" and "a wide range of voices, witnesses and experts were approached, and we have featured a range of opinions, including responses from people in the BJP."
Following the release of the documentary, Jack Straw, the former British Foreign Secretary, told Karan Thapar of The WIRE that, in Gujarat in 2002, “effective policing was required (to protect the lives of Muslims), but that did not take place until quite late.”
(*Story updated January 25, 2023)
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