India: The Modi Question, a two-part BBC documentary shown in the UK during the second half of January, “cannot” be seen in India. The Indian government has invoked emergency laws to “block” the documentary, which examines Narendra Modi’s role during the 2002 Gujarat violence when nearly a thousand Muslims were killed. Modi was then the chief minister of Gujarat.
The Guardian quotes Kanchan Gupta, an adviser at India’s ministry of information and broadcasting, as saying that Twitter and YouTube had been ordered to take down dozens of accounts that had aired clips from the Modi documentary because it was “undermining the sovereignty and integrity of India” and “making unsubstantiated allegations”.
Evidently a 2021 legislation that provides for the “blocking of information in case of emergency” has been used for this exercise of suppression, without a formal “ban” on the documentary being imposed. Unsurprisingly in our internet age, this “blocking” has failed to prevent a wide circulation of clips and even of the full versions. Student bodies at different universities, and opposition parties in several states, have screened or tried to screen the documentary, and authorities have responded harshly, inviting even greater interest in what the BBC has produced.
The swiftness and sweep of the steps to suppress the documentary, and the heat in the language employed against it, reveal a mountain of discomfort. I am reminded of Solzhenitsyn’s remark, “One word of truth shall outweigh the whole world.”
For defending the powerful Modi government, scores of influential individuals have been drafted to denounce the documentary, which has been called “propaganda”, proof of “the colonial mindset”, and, in a supposedly clinching epithet, “foreign”.
But abuse is not a rejoinder. And everyone knows that “foreigners” have often brought a torchlight to dark corners, whether in Myanmar, Afghanistan and Iran in current times, or in Cambodia in the 1970s and Rwanda in the 1990s, or elsewhere.
In their reactions, spokespersons of the Indian government have repeatedly pointed to the conclusion of India’s Supreme Court, announced in June last year, that charges of Modi’s personal involvement in one of the worst incidents of Gujarat’s 2002 violence had not been proved. However, that “clearance” was and is no answer to the cry on behalf of victims of that carnage: Why were they not protected?
At any given point of time, a judge may well possess the last word on whether or not a person should be punished. But a judge’s is not the final verdict on the course of painful events during a critical fortnight, whether for a book of history or a documentary. The conclusions of researchers on what happened in Gujarat in February and March 2002 have to be answered with facts and analysis, not with bans or abuse.
In a statement, the BBC has said that its documentary was “rigorously researched according to highest editorial standards”. Over the decades, large numbers of Indians have turned to the BBC for reliable information and commentary on disturbing events around the world. We can be sure, likewise, that many across the world will believe the BBC’s assessment of Gujarat’s tragic events of 2002.
Fulminations of the Indian government’s official spokespersons, and desperate attempts at censorship, only show a desire for the erasure of awkward history. These reactions to the BBC will do further damage to India’s deteriorating standing as a democracy. In 2022, India slipped eight places in the press freedom index to number 150, out of 180 counties. Within India, too, the establishment’s extreme reaction to the documentary has only revived memories of the unchecked hostility that Gujarat’s Muslims faced in 2002, and also underlined the insecurity and indignities they’ve lived with thereafter.
In a nation’s life there are periods when pointing out the truth becomes risky. Most choose to remain silent. During British rule over India, there were phases when quiet submission seemed to many to be the only option. On 9 June 1942, as Gandhi expressed his wish for a Quit India movement, Louis Fischer, an American journalist, said to him:
“If you look at this in its historic perspective, you are doing a novel and remarkable thing—you are ordaining the end of an empire.” Replied Gandhi, “Even a child can do that.”
Anyone with the slightest knowledge or memory of Gujarat 2002 could have recalled what happened. Yet it was one media institution that researched the course of events and produced the documentary. Thank you, BBC.