After the Madras University administration refused to provide permission for a screening of the BBC documentary ‘India: The Modi Question’ on campus, a section of the varsity’s students – led by the Students Federation of India (SFI) – retaliated by watching the two-episode film on their laptops on January 27, Friday. The documentary was initially scheduled to be screened at the varsity’s centenary auditorium around 3pm.
“More than 30 students participated in the protest at the university. There were no restrictions by the administration during the screening,” said Arun, who is the district president of SFI's Central Chennai unit. More screenings will take place in the following weeks at all educational institutions under the Union government in Tamil Nadu, he said. He added that after the documentary was screened on the hostel premises of the Presidency College on Thursday evening, the students were initially told to vacate the hostels on Friday and later asked to submit an apology letter.
“The students' initiative to screen the documentary at the Central University of Tamil Nadu (CUTN) in Thiruvarur district and the Pondicherry University was suppressed by the police on January 25. But they watched the documentary on their phones and laptops,” Arun said.
Resisting the censorship imposed by the BJP-led Union government on BBC's documentary on Prime Minister Narendra Modi, several student groups across the country have been organising screenings at various university campuses. On Thursday, student groups at the English and Foreign Languages University (EFLU) and the University of Hyderabad (UoH) in Telangana had also watched the documentary on their campus premises.
The BBC documentary had critically examined Modi’s role in the 2002 Gujarat riots, during which he was serving as the Chief Minister of the state. The documentary alleged that the police failed to take action against the perpetrators, also citing an internal UK government report which says that “Narendra Modi is directly responsible” for the riots.
The Union government termed the documentary ‘propaganda’, and blocked links to it by invoking Section 16 of IT rules 2021 and Section 69A of the IT Act, 2000. The links to the documentary were blocked on January 20. The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting also blocked the tweets that shared the link to the documentary, which resulted in students and political leaders retaliating through public screenings and other means.
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