In the episode, a team recounts their investigation into the role of the prime minister during the Gujarat riots in 2002. For the Foreign Office, it is steeped in “prejudice” and “lack of objectivity”. Meanwhile, the Ministry of Information has proposed a change in the law to prevent the dissemination of what the government decides they are “fake news“.
New Delhi ( / Agencies) – The Indian Foreign Ministry has branded a recent BBC documentary on Prime Minister Narendra Modi aired two days ago and removed from YouTube yesterday as “propaganda”. “Prejudice, lack of objectivity and the persistent colonial mentality are very evident,” said Arindam Bagchi, spokesman for the ministry. He added that the documentary was not screened in the country, in line with new government proposals to censor anything that government fact-checking agencies determine to be “fake news“.
In the first episode of the series, titled “India: The Modi Question”, the second episode of which will premiere on January 24, a team sent from the United Kingdom investigates the Gujarat riots of 2002. Based on a report sent to the British government but never released, the documentary claims that Modi, then prime minister of the Indian state, was “directly responsible for the climate of impunity” that led to violence between Hindus and Muslims.
Extensive sectarian clashes took place between February and March 2002, killing more than 2,000 people (the Indian government claims to have recorded half). According to the investigation team, Modi prevented the police from intervening to stop the attacks on Muslims. In 2012, the Indian Supreme Court cleared Modi of all charges, and only a year later a local magistrate agreed to see the English report.
The same day the documentary was broadcast, the Ministry of Technology and Information proposed to the Government a modification of the law that regulates the publication of online content. In this regard, the Publishers Guild of India expressed great concern: “There are already several laws in place to deal with content that is factually incorrect,” the association wrote on Twitter. “This new procedure basically serves to facilitate the muzzling of press freedom” and stifle “legitimate criticism of the government,” which is necessary for a properly functioning democracy.
Over the past two years, the Indian government has repeatedly confronted social platforms refusing to remove certain accounts or online content. Under the proposed amendment, platforms are prohibited from disseminating any information that government agencies deem false or misleading, and the wording of the law appears to give the government carte blanche to define what can and cannot be shared.
The unit that must verify the veracity of the news published by the Indian media, called the Press Information Bureau, was created in 2019, but in the last three years it has been frequently criticized for reporting content critical of the Executive and for repeatedly deleting of fake news documents that later turned out to be true.
