Members of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s Mumbai unit on Saturday held a protest outside the city’s Tata Institute of Social Sciences against the proposed screening of a BBC documentary that revisits Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s role in the 2002 Gujarat riots, reported The Indian Express.
Tajinder Singh Tiwana, the party’s Yuva Morcha president, alleged that the “anti-India film” is being screened with malafide intentions.
“The Institute authorities have not been able to provide any satisfactory response to our concerns,” Tiwana said, according to The Indian Express. “We will continue the protest.”
Some of the members of the saffron party also raised the slogan “desh ke gaddaron ko, goli maaro saalon ko” (shoot the traitors) during the protest.
On Friday, the Progressive Students’ Forum, a student collective at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, had announced it would screen the documentary, India: The Modi Question, on campus. However, the university said that it has not permitted any such screening and gatherings “which may disturb the academic environment and jeopardise the peace and harmony in the campuses”.
On Saturday, the university again issued an advisory to the students saying that any activity leading to a disturbance of peace and harmony will be dealt with by relevant institutional rules. It also prohibited the entry of journalists and outsiders on the campus.
However, the Progressive Students’ Forum, said that it will not stop the screening of the documentary.
“Not an inch back,” the forum said in a post on social media. “TISS [Tata Institute of Social Sciences] students will watch the BBC documentary.”
The Progressive Students’ Forum also urged the student community at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences and other universities to “rage against the ban and attack on free speech” by the BJP government.
The statement comes as the screening of the documentary was disrupted at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, Jamia Millia Islamia University and Delhi University.
The first episode of the two-part documentary was released on January 17. It alleges that a team sent by the British government had found that Modi, who was the chief minister of Gujarat when the riots took place, was “directly responsible for a climate of impunity” that led to the violence against Muslims. The second part was released on Tuesday.
While the documentary has not been made available in India, pirated links to the film have been shared widely on online platforms.
On January 20, the government had used emergency powers available under the Information Technology Rules, 2021, to issue directions to YouTube and Twitter to block clips of the documentary from being shared. The foreign ministry had described the documentary as “a propaganda piece designed to push a particular discredited narrative”.
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