Blocking BBC documentary on Gujarat riots goes against India’s democratic values, journalist says

Rana Ayyub: Well, the Foreign Office, when questioned about the revelations made by the foreign secretary, Jack Straw, on the Gujarat riots and his observations, has called the BBC documentary a propaganda by colonial minds, who are trying to discredit India and with the documentary. This is why the government of India has asked Twitter to remove Twitter accounts that have shared the link to the documentary. I have only seen the first part of the documentary. I have not been able to see the second part, because a couple of them have put out the links of the documentary, but each time they put out something, it is removed. The government has gone all out not just to censor the documentary, but stop, not just social media platforms, but any organization, any platform, any institution from publicly playing this documentary, and that goes against the very ethics of a democracy.

In 2002, Marco, about 60 Hindus were burned alive in a train, following which there was a decision made by the Modi government to take out the bodies in public. And over a week from that day, more than 1,000 Muslims were massacred. Mr. Modi was held responsible for, not just the lack of law and order, but the fact that the police did not act on time, that nothing was done to stop the attack on the Muslim community. Hate speeches were given in public by Hindu nationalists, and none of those hate speeches were stopped. The highest court in India, the Supreme Court, made an observation that Mr. Modi was like a modern day Nero, who looked the other way as innocent Muslims were massacred over a period of a week in Gujarat.

Why would a documentary done by BBC, or for that matter any publication, have to be censored? I think it is a right of every Indian to watch what it wants to. They are guaranteed that right by the constitution of this country, the right of every Indian to watch the documentary and decide for themselves what is right or what is wrong. The Indian government has used emergency powers to stop the screening of a documentary citing national security threats. So, I think this is a very exaggerated claim, especially vis-a-vis a documentary. And ironically, this is what normally happens when you censor something. It is broadly watched and discussed. This documentary is now being watched by almost every Indian who, initially, was indifferent or was not watching it.

Very, very recently the Indian government actually sanctioned the release of a film called “The Kashmir Files,” which has been called by many filmmakers as brazen propaganda of the Hindu right. Now, what happened in Kashmir, the attack on Hindus, was something that happened legitimately. But the movie, the way “The Kashmir Files” was made, was a very Islamophobic way that paints all Muslims as some kind of bloodthirsty villains. The prime minister of India, and this happened years ago, decades ago, but the prime minister of India and the home minister of India, not just endorsed the release of the film, but the prime minister went on record saying that no activist or no journalist should censor this film because it shows the reality of India. So, if it was really a law-and-order concern, then this is a pick-and-choose by the government of India, that it wants to show a certain documentary, but it does not want to show a certain [other] documentary.

Well, in a country which calls itself the world’s largest democracy, the prime minister of India has not taken a single press conference. One of the reasons why he did not give interviews was that he referred to journalists as “news traders.” In a country where 220 million Muslims in the country are routinely under attack by Hindu nationalists; where Hindu nationalists are seen in the national capital taking violent calls for converting India into a Hindu nation; when the prime minister of the country, who is absolutely media savvy, who likes to tweet about everything, does not tweet to ask for an inclusive India, does not tweet for an end to violence, does not take a single press briefing, does not give interviews to mainstream media; when journalists in India are being silenced, I think press freedom, there is no such thing as press freedom in India.

I really hope Mr. Dasgupta tries to see what’s happening on the ground, because this is an idea of democracy that he believes is only on camera, but not otherwise. So, I need to understand what kind of a democracy it is when every day you see violence against the Muslim community in acts that are public? Hindu nationalists are on camera in the presence of police forces, giving hate speeches, asking for a genocide of Muslims. I am trying to understand what is the construct of this democracy when some of India’s best-known student activists are behind bars for protesting the Citizenship Amendment Act, which is being brought by the Indian government, a discriminatory [law that] discriminates against Muslims in India. So, honestly, Marco, more than anybody else, I am looking for a semblance of democracy in this country, because I love this country more than I can ever speak about, because I have seen democratic values. And the reason why I, and many journalists like me and activists, are speaking about this, is because we are seeing an erosion of democratic values in a country, which is now heading toward what looks like a fascist state.