Modi’s thin skin

The Editors Guild of India has called the Modi government’s raid on the BBC offices a “continuation of a trend of using government agencies to intimidate and harass press organizations that are critical of government policies or the ruling establishment”. The raid on the BBC offices came just weeks after the British broadcaster aired a two-part documentary, ‘India: The Modi Question’. Indian tax authorities raided and searched BBC offices in Delhi and Mumbai; the BBC has said that it has been fully cooperating with the Indian authorities and that it hopes “to have this situation resolved as soon as possible”. Ever since the documentary was released by the BBC, the BJP government – and its very vocal and usually violent supporters – have been calling it hostile propaganda and “anti-India garbage”, BJP spokesperson Gaurav Bhatia even calling the British broadcaster the “most corrupt organization in the world”. Despite the reaction of the Indian government, the BBC stuck to its stance that the documentary was “rigorously researched" and "according to the highest editorial standards”.

The matter should have settled there. But in Modi’s India, neither Indian journalists nor international media organizations are safe from harassment and intimidation if they don’t bow down to the Modi junta’s pressure tactics. As it is, India’s press freedom ratings are not something to write home about. Lest we forget, this is the same government that snooped on journalists and dissident voices by using the Pegasus spyware, which is apparently sold to governments around the world by an Israeli company. India’s ‘shining’ image may have been a stretch to begin with but with a prime minister and a government that would want to spy on its own journalists and activists and spend millions purchasing software to target them, the country has now reached epic proportions of bigotry and intolerance. And ‘The Modi Question’ did not rankle Modi just because it was about his reality as a right-wing, regressive representative of a fascist movement but also because the documentary reached a wider audience in the West, and he is said to be quite touchy about his image in the West. The Indian prime minister and his party have tried very hard to present a palatable image of an oppressive state to the global audiences. With a documentary that shows how Modi was involved in the ethnic cleansing of Muslims in Gujarat and how his government at the centre since 2014 has been targeting Muslims one way or the other, this effort is in danger of being undone – hence, the state-level meltdown over its airing.

Censorship in India continues unabated elsewhere as well. According to The Guardian, India may prevent the declassification of papers from 1947 related to Kashmir, as it fears the “sensitive” letters might affect foreign relations. The letters – known as the Bucher Papers – contain “military operational matters in Kashmir and correspondences amongst senior government leaders on sensitive political matters on Kashmir”. Apart from its crackdown on Muslims and other communities in India, the current Indian government has also over the past few years unleashed one of the worst campaigns of violence against Occupied Kashmir and its people. The Modi government is reluctant to declassify these papers, which several Indian activists want to be made public. While more details regarding this are sure to come out, we know one thing is clear: no matter how many facades are put up, it is impossible for any tyrannical regime to hide its true nature for too long. The attack on the BBC in India is proof enough of that.