Protests against the controversial Narendra Modi Doc rage outside the BBC New Broadcasting House

Protests raged outside the BBC’s New Broadcasting House yesterday over the controversial Narendra Modi documentary, which Indian free speech activists are trying to correct on social media.

Large crowds of the UK’s Indian diaspora community gathered outside the BBC’s London headquarters on Sunday, outraged by the portrayal of the Indian leader and his relationship with the country’s Muslim minority in the recently released documentary titled India: The Modi Problem.

Meanwhile, India’s Supreme Court will next week consider petitions challenging the government order and demanding that excerpts of the show be removed from Twitter and YouTube, Reuters reports. Two lawyers have filed petitions against the move, which will be heard in the coming days.

The document, which the BBC defended as “strictly scrutinised”, examines how the leader of the world’s largest democracy pursued his presidency over allegations about his government’s attitude towards India’s Muslim minority. Episode one begins with Modi’s first steps into politics and two steps into Modi’s track record with the Muslim minority after re-election in 2019.

The Indian government was particularly offended by the coverage of Modi’s handling of unrest when he was prime minister in Gujarat in 2002, when a suspected Muslim mob set fire to a train carrying Hindu pilgrims. The incident sparked one of the worst outbreaks of religious bloodshed in independent India, and Modi was accused of not doing enough to stop the unrest. He was acquitted of a High Court investigation in 2012, and a petition against his acquittal was dismissed last year.

Kanchan Gupta, a senior adviser at India’s Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, called the documentary “enemy propaganda and anti-India rubbish”.

The latest developments come days after Elon Musk, the self-confessed freedom of expression fanatic, bowed to pressure on Twitter to ban the sharing of all images of the document on Twitter, while the Indian government imposed a similar ban on YouTube. Both platforms were quick to comply with the government’s censorship requests, and posts on about 50 Twitter accounts were removed, prompting criticism of Musk – a man who has repeatedly emphasized his freedom of expression and recently tweeted Donald Trump overturned prohibition.

The BBC said the documentary was “rigorously researched” and contained a wide range of voices and opinions, including reactions from people from Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata party.