Trinamool Congress MPs Mahua Moitra and Derek O’Brien on Sunday shared the link to the controversial BBC documentary on the 2002 Gujarat riots and Prime Minister Narendra Modi and vowed to fight against “censorship”. The government had on Friday directed social media platforms Twitter and YouTube to block links to the documentary titled “India: The Modi Question”. The Ministry of External Affairs has trashed the documentary as a “propaganda piece” that lacks objectivity and reflects a colonial mindset.
The Chenab Times reported that the two MPs also shared a list of Twitter links “blocked” on the government’s direction. “Twitter links of citizens blocked by Govt for sharing @BBC report. @derekobrienmp & @pbhushan1 on it. My link is still up,” Moitra tweeted.
“Sorry, Haven’t been elected to represent world’s largest democracy to accept censorship. Here’s the link. Watch it while you can,” Moitra posted the link to the documentary on her official handle.
“Govt on war footing to ensure no one in India can watch a mere @BBC show. Shame that the emperor & courtiers of the world’s largest democracy are so insecure,” Moitra tweeted on Saturday.
Opposition parties have opposed the move and claimed the documentary has “exposed” Modi. A Supreme Court-appointed investigation had found no evidence of wrongdoing by PM Modi, who was chief minister of Gujarat when the riots broke out in February 2002.
Directions to block the clips from being shared have been issued using emergency powers available to the government under the country’s information technology rules, said Kanchan Gupta, an adviser to the government, on his Twitter handle on Saturday.
While the BBC has not aired the documentary in India, the video was uploaded on some YouTube channels, Gupta said.
The government has issued orders to Twitter to block over 50 tweets linking to the video of the documentary and YouTube has been instructed to block any uploads of the video, Gupta said. Both YouTube and Twitter have complied with the directions, he added.
Modi was the chief minister of the western state of Gujarat when it was gripped by communal riots that left more than 1,000 people dead, by government count – most of them Muslims. The violence erupted after a train carrying Hindu pilgrims caught fire, killing 59.
Human rights activists estimate at least double that number died in the rioting.
Modi denied accusations that he failed to stop the rioting. A special investigation team appointed by the Supreme Court to investigate the role of Modi and others in the violence said in a 541-page report in 2012 it could find no evidence to prosecute the then chief minister.
Modi was later named the head of his party, the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, which he led to power in general elections in 2014 and then in 2019.
(With inputs from news agency PTI, Reuters)
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