Former judges, bureaucrats, veterans slam BBC for documentary, back Modi on CAA, removal of Art 370

• Former Rajasthan HC chief justice Anil Deo Singh, former home secy L C Goyal, former foreign secy Shashank, former RAW chief Sanjeev Tripathi and former NIA director Yogesh Chander Modi are among the signatories
• Among the key arguments they put forth to slam the noted media outlet is the clean chit given to Modi by all Indian agencies, including the Supreme Court-appointed panel
• The asked the BBC to know that “India does not need colonial, imperialistic, somnambulistic outsiders” whose primary claim to fame has been “divide and rule” under the British Raj to teach Indians how to live together in unity.

After Indian government, over 300 popular personalities on Saturday slammed the BBC for its documentary on Prime Minister Narendra Modi where the reputed media outlet examined his role in the 2002 Gujarat riots. They also backed the Modi government over the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and stripping away of Article 30 which gave special status the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir.

The BBC’s two-part series, “India: The Modi Question” have looked into the riots details in the state when Modi was chief minister. The BBC defended its series. “The documentary was rigorously researched according to the highest editorial standards,” a BBC spokesperson said in a statement.

Notably, several Union ministries swung into action with Information and Broadcasting ministry ordering the YouTube and Twitter to block sharing of the show.

A group of 302 former judges, ex-bureaucrats and veterans called the documentary “motivated charge sheet against our leader, a fellow Indian and a patriot” and a reflection of its “dyed-in-the-wool negativity and unrelenting prejudice”, according to PTI. It added that the documentary is the archetype of past British imperialism in India setting itself up as both judge and jury to resurrect Hindu-Muslim tensions that were overwhelmingly the creation of the British Raj policy of divide and rule.

This documentary is not a neutral critique and is not about exercising creative freedom or a divergent, anti-establishment point of view, a statement signed by 13 former judges, 133 ex-bureaucrats, including diplomats, and 156 veterans said, reported the news agency.  “Not only is the BBC series, judging from what we have seen of it so far, based on delusional and evidently lopsided reporting, but it presumes to question the very basis of the 75-year-old edifice of India’s existence as an independent, democratic nation, a nation which functions according to the will of the people of India,” it said.

In a hard-hitting statement, they asked the BBC to know that “India does not need colonial, imperialistic, somnambulistic outsiders” whose primary claim to fame has been “divide and rule” under the British Raj to teach Indians how to live together in unity.

Among the key arguments they put forth to slam the BBC is the clean chit given to Modi by all the Indian agencies, including the Supreme Court-appointed panel.

Nearly, 2000 people, mostly Muslims were killed in the communal riots that ran for days. Scores of women were gangraped and thousands have been pushed to camps in the wake of the communal carnage.

Former Rajasthan High Court chief justice Anil Deo Singh, former home secretary L C Goyal, former foreign secretary Shashank, former RAW chief Sanjeev Tripathi and former NIA director Yogesh Chander Modi are among the signatories to the letter.

Their statement added, “Regardless of whom you, as an individual Indian, might have voted for, the Prime Minister of India is the Prime Minister of your country, our country. We cannot allow just about anyone to run amok with their deliberate bias, their vacuous reasoning…. ” Their statement alleged that the BBC series reeks of motivated distortion that is “as mind-numbingly unsubstantiated as it is nefarious”.

-INDIA NEWS STREAM