Top Indian university bans screening of BBC series on PM Modi

• BBC documentary is based on Narendra Modi’s role during the deadly 2002 sectarian riots.
• Students at New Delhi’s prestigious Jawaharlal Nehru University planned to screen the documentary.
• A memo from the university’s registrar was issued late Monday ordering students to cancel the event.

A top Indian university has banned the screening of a BBC documentary about Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s role during the deadly 2002 sectarian riots after his government attempted to block its spread online.

According to the broadcaster’s program, Hindu nationalist Modi, who was the premier of Gujarat state at the time, ordered police to turn a blind eye to an outbreak of violence that killed at least 1,000 people, the majority of whom were minority Muslims.

Students at New Delhi’s prestigious Jawaharlal Nehru University planned to screen the documentary on Tuesday, defying Indian authorities’ efforts to limit its screening.

However, a memo from the university’s registrar was issued late Monday ordering students to cancel the event and threatening “strict disciplinary action” if the edict was disobeyed.

“Such unauthorized activity may disrupt the peace and harmony of the university campus,” the statement said.

For years, free-speech activists and opposition leaders have accused Modi’s government of stifling dissent.

It used emergency powers under India’s contentious information technology laws on Saturday to prevent the documentary from being shared on social media.

Kanchan Gupta, a government adviser, slammed the series as “hostile propaganda and anti-India garbage” disguised as a documentary.

Order social media platforms to block links

The order issued by India to social media platforms to block links to the documentary “blatantly contradicts the country’s stated commitment to democratic ideals,” said Beh Lih Yi of the Committee to Protect Journalists in a statement on Monday.

The Gujarat riots began in 2002 after 59 Hindu pilgrims were killed in a train fire. Thirty-one Muslims were found guilty of criminal conspiracy and murder in connection with that incident.

According to a previously classified British foreign ministry report citing unnamed sources, Modi met with senior police officers and “ordered them not to intervene” in the subsequent attacks on Muslims.

It also said the violence was “politically motivated” and the aim “was to purge Muslims from Hindu areas”.

The riots would not have been possible “without the climate of impunity created by the state government. Narendra Modi is directly responsible,” the report concluded.

Modi ruled Gujarat from 2001 until his election as Prime Minister in 2014, and he was briefly barred from entering the country due to the violence.

An investigation team appointed by the Indian Supreme Court to look into Modi’s and others’ roles in the violence concluded in 2012 that there was insufficient evidence to charge him.

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