High drama over the divisive BBC documentary on Prime Minister Narendra Modi broke out at the Jamia Millia Islamia campus in the capital. In advance of the screening, some students were allegedly detained for causing a disturbance outside the university.
The Left-leaning Students Federation of India (SFI) students announced earlier in the day that they would show the BBC documentary “India: The Modi Question” at 6 p.m. today. “No film screenings will be permitted” according to the Jamia administration, without permission.
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The university reiterated through a circular, “The University affirms that no student gathering or movie screening will be permitted on campus without permission. The university is making every effort to stop individuals or organizations with a vested interest from destroying the tranquil academic environment here.”
This comes a day after horrific events were reported at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), when students said they were beaten with stones while watching the documentary on their phones because the university administration had forbidden the screening.
A group of college students marched to the Vasant Kunj police station to report the suspected stone throwers. Aishe Ghosh, the president of the JNUSU, claimed that members of the student organization Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad stoned them.
The Presidency University in Kolkata’s Students Federation of India has requested permission from the school’s administration to show the documentary on January 27 at 4 p.m. Despite BJP protests, the documentary was shown by a number of political organizations in Kerala.
The documentary has been subject to a harsh crackdown by the Modi government, which refers to it as a “propaganda piece” and a “malicious campaign.” Following the government’s directives, more than 50 tweets have been deleted, and a number of YouTube videos that shared the documentary have also been deleted.
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The Congress and the TMC are two opposition parties that have criticized the Centre’s decision to forbid the documentary. Mahua Moitra, a Trinamool MP, sent a link to the second instalment of the two-part documentary, which debuted yesterday at 9 p.m. in the UK. “This is episode two” (with buffering delays). When they remove this link, I’ll upload another one, she tweeted.
