The Delhi Police detained several students of the Jamia Millia Islamia university after the Students’ Federation of India (SFI) planned to screen the BBC documentary on Narendra Modi and the 2002 Gujarat riots on campus.
The university administration said permission to screen the documentary was not sought and accused the SFI of having a “vested interest to destroy the peaceful academic atmosphere of the university”.
The Modi government has moved to censor the documentary – which was not broadcast on Indian television – across social media platforms, asking YouTube and Twitter to take down posts that linked to the film. The Ministry of External Affairs has termed it a “propaganda piece with bias“.
The first episode of the BBC documentary detailed the findings of a UK government inquiry into the riots, which said Modi – then the chief minister of Gujarat – was “directly responsible” for the killings. The second episode, which aired on January 24 in the UK, dealt with aspects of Modi’s “troubled relationship” with India’s Muslims after his re-election in 2019.
The crackdown on Jamia students comes a day after students of Jawaharlal Nehru University accused the administration of cutting power and internet to sections of the campus to foil attempts to screen the documentary. While the students watched it on laptops in the students’ union office, they accused members of the RSS-affiliated Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) of pelting stones at them.
The Jamia, the SFI – the CPI(M)’s student wing – had released a poster that said the documentary would be screened at MCRC lawn gate 8 at 6 pm. The administration said permission was not taken to screen the BBC documentary. “It has come to the knowledge of the university administration that some students belonging to a political organization have circulated a poster about the screening of a controversial documentary film on the university campus today,” it said in a statement, warning of “strict disciplinary action” in case it is screened.
