BBC documentary row: Centre blocks tweets, YouTube videos sharing ‘India: The Modi Question’ clips

After the discussion regarding a recent documentary on India kicked up a row in the country, the Centre decided to block some of the Twitter accounts, tweets, and YouTube videos sharing clips of the documentary online, as per media reports.

According to sources, the Indian government has issued a direction to block all the YouTube channels and Twitter accounts that are sharing clips and links to the BBC documentary in question, which is called “India: The Modi Question”.

The two-part BBC documentary, which claims it investigated certain aspects relating to the 2002 Gujarat riots when Prime Minister Narendra Modi was the chief minister of the state, has been trashed by the Ministry of External Affairs as a "propaganda piece" that lacked objectivity and reflected a "colonial mindset".

The BBC documentary has been dubbed as inaccurate by the Ministry of External Affairs, and emergency orders were issued by the IT Ministry to block the social media channels and accounts that were seen sharing the links and clips of the documentary.

The BBC two-part documentary ‘India: The Modi Question’ has not been made available for screening in India, after the content of the film was analysed by several ministries, including Home and IT, who found it to be an attempt to cast aspersions on the authority and credibility of the Supreme Court.

Further, the Centre and ministry officials believe that the BBC documentary sows divisions among various Indian communities, and makes unsubstantiated allegations regarding the actions of foreign governments in India, as per PTI reports.

While opposition parties like the Congress and the TMC criticised the Modi government for "censorship", a group of 302 former judges, ex-bureaucrats, and veterans slammed the BBC documentary as a "motivated charge sheet against our leader, a fellow Indian and a patriot" and a reflection of "dyed-in-the-wool negativity and unrelenting prejudice".

In a statement, the former bureaucrats and others claimed the documentary is the archetype of past British imperialism in India setting itself up as both judge and jury to resurrect Hindu-Muslim tensions that were overwhelmingly the creation of the British Raj policy of divide and rule.

(With PTI inputs)

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