- Wednesday, November 27, 2024
By: Shubham Ghosh
Indian external affairs minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar on Tuesday (21) said the timing of the controversial documentary series by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) on Indian prime minister Narendra Modi and the 2002 riots in his home state Gujarat was “not accidental” and called it “politics by another means” as he denounced the narrative in the foreign media about the country’s Modi government.
“There’s a phrase – war by other means. Think of it – this is politics by other means. Why is there suddenly a surge of reports, attention, and views? Will some of these things not happen again?” Jaishankar said in an interview to ANI, while responding to a question on the documentary and the criticism of Hungarian-American billionaire George Soros.
The documentary, which comes a year before the 2024 general elections, was taken down from social media platforms last month by the Indian government, which used emergency powers under IT rules.
“You have to make a documentary? Many things happened in Delhi in 1984. Why didn’t we see a documentary? I mean, come on, you think the timing is accidental? Let me tell you one thing – I don’t know if election season has started in India and Delhi or not but for sure it has started in London and New York,” the diplomat said, referring to the deadly anti-Sikh riots in 1984 that occurred in the wake of the assassination of former Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards.
According to Jaishankar, sometimes, politics of India didn’t originate in its borders, but came from outside.
The BBC’s two-part series titled ‘India: The Modi Question’ examines allegations that Modi, who was the chief minister of Gujarat at the time of the riots, didn’t do enough to stop the violence — allegations that were dismissed by the Supreme Court of India.
“I mean, do you doubt it? Look who the cheerleaders are. What is happening is, just like I told you — this drip, drip, drip — how do you shape a very extremist image of India, of the government, of the BJP, of the prime minister. I mean, this has been going on for a decade,” Jaishankar added.
The motive behind such stories overseas was to further the anti-India agenda, he said.
“Let’s not have illusions about it…, there is an echo chamber, it will be picked outside and then they will say it is being said outside, it must be true. Then you will say it inside. There is a ding-dong going on, look this is a globalized world, people take that politics abroad,” the minister said.
“We are not debating just a documentary or a speech that somebody gave in a European city or a newspaper edits somewhere — we are debating, actually politics, which is being conducted ostensibly as media — there is a phrase ‘war by other means’ this is politics by another means — I mean you will do a hatchet job, you want to do a hatchet job and say this is just another quest for truth which we decided after 20 years to put at this time.”
He also challenged those behind the narrative to come to the political arena.
“This is politics at play by people who do not have the courage to come into the political field. They want to have that teflon cover saying that I am an NGO, media organisation etc. They are playing politics,” he said.
