An avoidable controversy
Not many Indians have any interest in the documentary released by the BBC titled, ‘India — the Modi Question’. All the young people seem to have watched it. Those who had not, did so after the government’s ban. They say that they had heard about Gujarat’s 2002 riots, but now they are better informed.
A documentary here or there is not going to dislodge Modi. He is well entrenched on the political front.
Individual decisions to vote for or against Modi have not changed because of what they learnt from the documentary about the riots and the sins of omission. There are die-hard BJP supporters who are pro-Modi come what may. There are humanists who oppose him on moral grounds and leftists who oppose him on ideological grounds. None is going to change his or her opinion because of what the BBC established in its investigation. The poor and the illiterate do not care if Modi has failed to do his ‘raj dharma’. They are interested only in survival, and this is natural. They are the ones who voted Modi to office.
Every informed Indian knows what happened on the streets of Ahmedabad in 2002. They know that 59 kar sevaks were burnt alive in a train just outside the Godhra railway station — a dastardly crime by any definition. They know that the bodies were allowed to be brought to Ahmedabad to excite passions. The police should have been ready. Some people seem to know how the majoritarian response was organised and by whom. And every policeman on the street was aware that the political authority was not averse to a modicum of revenge. The party in power would have lost political mileage if Modi had done his ‘raj dharma’.
The tragedy was that the Army was called out but made to cool its heels for a day at the airport after the troops had landed. By the time it was deployed, it was too late! The mobs were uncontrollable. They were soon possessed of a different personality that made it impossible for its constituents to think as normal individuals, unless the police intervened, as it was supposed to. Twenty years later, Home Minister Amit Shah during electioneering claimed that ‘we’ taught them a lesson ‘they’ will never forget, which, he said, was proved by the absence of communal violence of any sort in the two decades since 2002! If the party, which Shah once headed, has admitted its part in teaching someone a lesson, and actually boasted about its achievement, why on earth is the same party, now in power in Delhi, shy of a BBC documentary that supports Shah’s claim? And which many curious Indians have already downloaded from the Internet and continue to download?
Whenever Muslims are, as Shah puts it, taught a lesson, BJP supporters applaud. The poor and the illiterate who have begun to vote for the party are not concerned about the ethical or legal implications of the violence unleashed. Nothing would have changed in India if the documentary was allowed to be shown. A little excitement among the regime’s opponents would be the maximum that could have resulted. After memory faded, which would have happened in a week or two at the most, it would have been business as usual. Modi would not have lost the domestic support he presently enjoys.
A documentary here or there is not going to dislodge Modi from his perch. He is well entrenched on the political front. The opposition parties have a strong presence in many pockets, but most of these parties have leaders with national ambitions. They are not going to form a united opposition because each leader feels he or she should be the one to replace Modi. The result is preordained. Modi is the undisputed leader for another term.
Ramniwas Malik, a reader of The Tribune, has brought to my notice that Maria Ressa, an internationally renowned journalist from the Philippines, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2021, is presently fighting a spate of criminal cases filed against her by the recently ousted President, Rodrigo Duterte, who was dethroned in the elections by the son of ex-President Ferdinand Marcos. Whether that change will result in the dropping of charges against the Nobel laureate cannot be said at this moment, but what should bother us is that opponents, and even mere critics of our own government, like Harsh Mander — a compassionate ex-bureaucrat who is disliked by the regime — is being hounded by it just for mitigating the miseries of the victims of hate!
Two incisive comments on the documentary and the ban are worth perusing. One is by Bharat Bhushan in a business publication, and the other titled, ‘What the BBC’s Modi Question reveals about India’ by Vidya Krishnan, a global health reporter, who works and lives in India. Both articles are not complimentary to Modi but they must be read for the sheer force of the truth they hope to establish. These truths will not convince Modi-bhakts to vote against him in 2024, but they may influence fence-sitters to ruminate. Vidya has concluded that Modi’s ‘media strategy has been to spin so many lies that it has left everyone disoriented’. Bhushan says that ‘the government is seeking to recalibrate citizens’ rights according to their religion’.
We who live in India know that there is much truth in what these commentators have written. The recent demonstrations outside the BBC office in London by the Indian diaspora and the statements made in British Parliament by MPs show that divisive forces prevalent in India have influenced the thought processes of PIOs to such an extent that one or two cities in the UK have actually experienced riots between Hindus and Muslims of British nationality!
Another fear is that the cordial ties between the UK and our country could sour because of this controversy. The British foreign office has gone out of its way to explain to the Indian High Commissioner that the BBC is independent of the government. In the UK, the government does not interfere even remotely with the functioning of independently constituted bodies. Indians will not understand the UK foreign office’s statement. Modi’s core followers, and there are many, would be mollified only if Rishi Sunak uses whatever stick he wields to discipline the BBC. Alas, he is not permitted to carry a stick!
