BLOCKING STUDENTS' WILL & VISION

Several Jamia students detained after attempting to screen BBC documentary on Gujarat riots

NT Correspondent

New Delhi: Unrest has gripped campuses of prominent varisities in the national capital with Delhi Police on Wednesday detaining several students of Jamia Millia Islamia University after the Students’ Federation of India (SFI) sought to screen the controversial BBC documentary on Narendra Modi and the 2002 Gujarat riots on the campus. Accoridng to reports, four students were detained around noon, while seven or eight more students were picked up by the cops around 3 pm.

The news agency PTI claimed that more than 70 students were detained. It is not clear if all the detained students are affiliated to the SFI. The university administration said permission to screen the documentary was not sought and accused the SFI of having a “vested interest to destroy the peaceful academic atmosphere of the university”.

The Modi government has moved to censor the documentary – which was not broadcast on Indian television – across social media platforms, asking YouTube and Twitter to take down posts which were linked to the film. The Ministry of External Affairs has termed it a “propaganda piece with bias“.

The first episode of the BBC documentary detailed the findings of a UK government enquiry into the riots, which said Modi – then the chief minister of Gujarat – was “directly responsible” for the killings. The second episode, which was aired on January 24 in the UK, dealt with aspects of Modi’s “troubled relationship” with India’s Muslims after his re-election in 2019.

The crackdown on Jamia students comes a day after students of Jawaharlal Nehru University accused the administration of cutting power and internet to sections of the campus to foil attempts to screen the documentary. While the students watched it on laptops in the students’ union office, they accused members of the RSS-affiliated Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) of pelting stones at them.