India is going out of a limb to block in the country a BBC documentary that cast a shadow over Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his dealing of riots in the Gujarat state when he was Chief Minister in 2002.
The documentary has not been aired in India by BBC on its local broadcast. The government decided to also block the sharing of clips from the documentary on social media, using India’s information technology rules. The documentary was uploaded on some YouTube channels.
India requested YouTube to block any upload of the video and told Twitter to block tweets with links of the documentary. According to government adviser Kanchan Gupta, both tech companies complied with the request.
The riots in Gujarat caused at least 1,000 deaths according to official sources – human rights activists account for at least double the official number. The riots sparkled after a train with Hindu pilgrims caught fire, with Muslims accused of the deed. Modi was the Chief Minister of Gujarat and allegedly did not act swiftly to stop the rioting, but an investigation by the Supreme Court in 2012 did not find evidence to prosecute him. The current Prime Minister is a member of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party.
