Three political outfits in Kerala – the Students’ Federation of India, Democratic Youth Federation of India (DYFI) and the Youth Congress – have announced that they will screen the controversial BBC documentary ‘India: The Modi Question’, which questions the leadership of Narendra Modi, who was the Chief Minister of Gujarat when it witnessed violent communal riots in 2002. It also features a report by a British inquiry team submitted to the UK government.
The Union Government had asked Twitter and popular video sharing platform YouTube to remove the links to the BBC documentary by invoking emergency powers under Section 16 of the IT Rules, 2021. The links of the documentary were blocked on January 20.
DYFI, the youth wing of the Communist Marxist Party, will organize the show of the documentary at 200 venues across the state as announced in its Facebook page. The SFI, the students’ wing of the CPI(M) will begin the screening of the documentary in all campuses in the state from Tuesday, January 25, state secretary PM Arsho told TNM. The Youth Congress will also exhibit the documentary, state president Shafi Parambil announced on his Facebook page.
The Bharatiya Janata Party has come out against the move to exhibit the documentary. Union minister of state V Muraleedharan asked Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan to urgently intervene in the matter.
In Hyderabad Central University, the movie was screened by a student group called the Fraternity Movement on Monday, January 23. Generally, permission is taken from the authorities by informing the dean of students' welfare and then permission is granted to screen movies in a hall. In this case no permission was taken from authorities and the movie was screened in the open near the shopping complex. HCU has asked for a report from the security department.
According to reports, the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) on Monday asked a group of students to cancel the planned screening of the documentary. The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) and senior ministers in the Union Cabinet had slammed the BBC calling the documentary a propaganda film.