The United States government managed to put Al Capone in jail because of a tax issue and not because of his murder record. The Indian authorities that last week decided to charge the BBC, two months after having searched its newsrooms in Delhi and Bombay, have also done so for a story of deaths. About two thousand. But these were not put by the British chain.
What is authored by the BBC is The Modi Question, a two-part documentary broadcast in February only for the United Kingdom and on the second channel. Still, he pissed off the Indian prime minister. Especially the half that reconstructs the anti-Muslim pogrom that devastated the state of Gujarat for three days in 2002, when its head of government and head of the police was Narendra Modi.
New Delhi ordered Twitter, YouTube and other platforms to remove links to the documentary in India. Some universities, such as Jawaharlal Nehru in Delhi, tried to circumvent censorship with film clubs, but the viewings were aborted by riot police.
The documentary is devastating for Modi, but it includes similar points of view and does not forget what was the fuze of the pogrom. Hours earlier, a trainload of Hindu extremists returning from demanding a Rama temple on the ruins of the Ayodhya mosque, was set on fire by a mob of Muslims at Godhra station.
They killed 58 comrades of Modi, whose party, the BJP, orbits around the same Hindu supremacist organization (RSS) as theirs. Violence, in a state given to riots, despite being Gandhi’s hometown, was taken for granted. But the Modi government, instead of containing it, fueled it by allowing the charred remains to be displayed in the capital. Then, according to testimonies collected by the BBC, “he gave them three days to let off steam.”
That carnage, in the face of police passivity, not only did not ruin Modi’s career, but was essential to catapult it on a national scale. Although the United States and the United Kingdom vetoed her entry for many years. Even the Gujarati businessmen made the massacre ugly. Only Gautam Adani defended him, who with Modi already in New Delhi rose briefly to the first fortune in Asia. The second part portrays more recent episodes of Islamophobia, inspired or supported by Hindu chauvinism in power. From the lynching of dozens of beef carriers to the suppression of self-government in Kashmir, to the citizenship law that discriminates against Muslim immigration. It also reflects the crackdown on protests at Jamia Millia Islamiya University and the attempted pogrom in northeast Delhi just before covid.
A foreign television crew that wanted to film this documentary would never have obtained the necessary visas. If the BBC was able to outwit him, it is thanks to the Indian staff in its newsrooms in New Delhi and Bombay. Hence, both were searched by the police shortly after the broadcast. With the “evidence” obtained, the anti-fraud agency last week accused the BBC of violating the rules on introducing and exchanging currencies.
In reality, nothing in The Modi Question is new to any informed Indian, although in the elections a year from now young people who were not yet born will vote. What some wonder is why the BBC now remembers Modi, for “archived” matters. When in addition the British Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, is of Indian origin.
Modi recently celebrated 75 years of Indian independence by placing a statue of anti-British leader Subhas Chandra Bose on the stone pavilion formerly of George V. And Britain is in a rush to finalize a free trade deal that India is making contingent on immigration concessions. .
The fact is that there would already be material for a third party. The face of the opposition, Rahul Gandhi, has just been sentenced to two years in prison and disqualification for asking himself at a rally “why is it that all thieves are called Modi.”
