The Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) has asked a group of students to cancel the screening of the controversial BBC documentary on Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The students allegedly planned to screen ‘India: The Modi Question’ tomorrow at 9 PM, the university administration said in a statement. “No prior permission for this event has been taken from the JNU administration,” it said.
The government has blocked access to the two-part BBC documentary which claims to have investigated certain aspects of the 2002 Gujarat riots when PM Modi was the state’s Chief Minister.
“This is to emhasize that such an unauthorized activity may disturb peace and harmony of the University Campus. The concerned students/individuals are firmly advised to cancel the proposed programme,” the JNU statement said.
The government had on Friday directed social media platforms Twitter and YouTube to block links to the series. The Ministry of External Affairs trashed the documentary as a “propaganda piece” that lacks objectivity and reflects a colonial mindset.
Opposition leaders have lashed out at the centre with some of them even sharing the link to the documentary.
Trinamool Congress MPs Mahua Moitra and Derek O’Brien shared a list of Twitter links “blocked” on the government’s direction. Ms Moitra said she will not accept “censorship” and posted a link to the documentary on her official handle.
“Sorry, Haven’t been elected to represent the world’s largest democracy to accept censorship. Here’s the link. Watch it while you can,” she tweeted on Saturday.
A special investigation team appointed by the Supreme Court had said, in a a 541-page report, in 2012 that it could find no evidence of wrongdoing by PM Modi, who was chief minister of Gujarat when the riots broke out in February 2002.
With inputs from NDTV
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