Riot police and students are detained at Delhi’s Jamia over a BBC film screening.
After the Students Federation of India publicised the screening on Facebook, administrators at Jamia Millia Islamia declared that they would not permit any unapproved gatherings on campus.
On Wednesday, the famous Jamia Millia Islamia university in Delhi cancelled classes and detained three members of a left-wing student union over plans to show the divisive BBC documentary on Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the mass communication department this evening.
Southeast Delhi’s college was approached by police in blue riot gear and trucks armed with tear gas cannons. After the Students Federation of India announced the screening on Facebook on Tuesday, officials at Jamia declared in a statement that they would not permit any unapproved meetings on campus.
The government has imposed a ban on the movie and asked social media companies to remove links to it because it is based on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s time as Gujarat’s Chief Minister during the 2002 riots. The move has been criticised by the opposition as obvious censorship.
A similar screening that some students attempted to host yesterday night at Jawaharlal Nehru University encountered difficulties since the students’ union office’s internet and electricity went out. Instead, hundreds of people gathered outside in the pitch black to watch the documentary on laptops or phone screens, and the evening concluded with a protest march. The JNU administration had threatened disciplinary punishment if the video was shown, claiming that doing so may damage campus peace and unity.
The two-part documentary series “India: The Modi Question” has been dubbed a “propaganda work” by PM Modi’s administration. The riots in Gujarat were investigated, and he was found to be innocent of all charges. An appeal against his exoneration in one of the cases connected to the killings was denied by the Supreme Court last year.
In the three-day rioting in Gujarat in 2002, more than 1,000 people died, and the state police came under heavy criticism for failing to do enough to quell the unrest that broke out when a train carrying pilgrims was burned in Godhra, killing 59 people.