“Truth has a nasty habit of coming out”

–Rahul Gandhi

Rahul Gandhi used this statement to comment on BBC’s documentary India: The Modi Question. I can comfortably say that this is one statement that will bite Mr. Rahul Gandhi before the end of this year.

Either BJP is very clever and far sighted or Rahul Gandhi and his team are extremely naïve (its a polite way of saying something else) and short sighted. He, his Congress Party, some other opposition parties, so called journalists like Ravish Kumar or the wire left no stone unturned in calling Indian Government’s actions as Censorship, Fascism, Emergency so on and so forth. They did enough publicity of the documentary without even watching both the parts thoroughly.

Also read: Shameless Ravish Kumar’s Prime Time on Inflation

None of the BJP politicians or spokes persons said the actual reason as to why the links were blocked and what exactly is in that documentary.

Produced and Directed by Sadhana Subramaniam (not related to Subramanian Swamy BJP MP although he does feature in the documentary) was aired on BBC’s channel Two for its UK audience earlier this year. You just need to have a UK tv license to watch the documentary.

I recently saw the two parts documentary on BBC iPLAYER.

So, what’s in the documentary?

As you might have already been made aware of, the first part talks about Gujarat Riots of 2002. That’s true, you might be expecting usual stuff here, how Modi/Police/Hindus are to be blamed. On the contrary:

• The documentary categorically states that the riots were a result of Muslims burning a train, leading to a death of 59 Hindu pilgrims. 31 Muslims were convicted later for setting the train on fire.
• The documentary very clearly shows that cases against the then chief minister Modi were based on rumors and heresy. Neither the Special Investigation Team (SIT) nor the Supreme Court of India found any real evidences against him. In fact, the documentary goes on to state that it was an endeavor to destroy Narendra Modi politically.

This was part one. What is in part two of the documentary?

Part II of the documentary is BJP’s election manifesto.

The documentary links mob lynching directly to cow smuggling. The lynching increased with Pink Revolution tag by PM Modi and were controlled after PM Modi’s speech in 2017 against Cow Vigilantism. The speech quoted is this one:

This is an interesting rebuttal to those people who claim PM Modi never spoke about the Cow Vigilantism. Apart from this, the documentary in its second part goes on talking about National Register of Citizens (NRC), the persecutions of Hindus in the neighboring states, the CAA and the removal of Article 370.

Also read: After effects of abrogating 35A and diluting 370

Aren’t these the very same things that find place in BJP’s election campaign? As a matter of fact, BJP hasn’t been talking about these things but the opposition, the woke journalists and news portals are all doing BJP’s bidding. Isn’t it?

So, the obvious question that arise now is “If the documentary was or is so good for BJP, why did it ban the it in the first place?“

The thing is BJP didn’t. It was BBC who issued a takedown request for the links of the documentary circulating across the world as it was produced for its channel BBC Two’s UK audience. Its not free, you need a tv license to watch the content. Its business for BBC. Its exactly the same as movie makers in India keep complaining about piracy. Why don’t you release movies on YouTube? It was not supposed to be on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter etc. in the first place. Indian Government and BJP by taking quick and prompt actions against these link proved that it respects copyrights and intellectual property rights of different people and groups unlike Rahul Gandhi who claimed in his Cambridge Lecture that there is no need of Intellectual Property rights when he compared China’s stealing/copying culture to America’s patent culture.

Also read: Rahul Gandhi’s election pitch is a broken record

As a matter of fact different people already knew about this. But they still continue to promote false narratives. Aljazeera’s article, snapshot below. What do I say about Indian news channels and journalists; they are beyond help.

And now the punchline. So, how is it going to bite Mr. Rahul Gandhi if Indians can’t even watch it as it is aired only in the UK?

Have a look at the screenshots, the first one as well as the one below.

Did you notice it says “10 months left to watch“?

That’s the time it would remain active on the BBC’s iPLAYER and then it would go inactive and will get archived. BBC will not issue any takedown notices after that. More than enough publicity is already been done for this documentary and as soon as the links are available again, you will find it circulating like wild fire. BBC might even put it on its official YouTube channel to earn extra revenue.

By the way, by then we would be a few months away from the general elections and some will then call BBC godi media!

Some popular and interesting participants in the documentary:

• Arundhati Roy (Author)
• Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay (Journalist Aljazeera)
• Siddharth Varadarajan (Founding Editor of The Wire)
• Hartosh Singh Bal (Political Editor of The Caravan Magzine)
• Safoora Zargar (anti CAA protest fame)
• Swapan Dasgupta (Member BJP National Executive ; former MP Rajya Sabha)
• Subramanian Swamy (MP Rajya Sabha, BJP)
• Dr. Swadesh Singh (BJP Gujarat)

After looking at the participants, you decide by yourself what would the documentary convey. Just wait and watch how congress gets humiliates itself on an even grander scale in the upcoming general elections 2024. Also it was Indira Gandhi who banned BBC and not Modi!! Sometimes pictures speak louder than words

Also read: The god of subtle propaganda; Booker Prize winning author Arundhati Roy

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