External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar said the timing of the BBC documentary on Prime Minister Narendra Modi, which stirred up a political storm in India, was not accidental. The two-part documentary titled ‘India: The Modi Question’ was aired by the British broadcaster on January 17 and January 24.
“I mean, come on, you think timing is accidental! Let me tell you one thing – I don’t know if the election season has started in India, Delhi or not, but, for sure it has started in London, New York,” the minister said in an interview to a news agency.
The first part of the documentary explores the alleged involvement of Modi in the 2002 Gujarat riots even as the Indian probe agencies and the Supreme Court have given a clean chit to him. The second part examines the Modi government’s track record following his re-election in 2019.
“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, ” he added.
“Why suddenly there is a surge of reports and attention and views? I mean, were some of these things not happening earlier. Many things happened in Delhi in 1984, why don’t we see a documentary on that? If that was your concern, you suddenly feel one day, ‘I am very humanistic, I must get justice for people who have been wronged’, ” he said.
Jaishankar termed the documentary and the ensuing furore as politics at play by people who do not have courage to come into the political field. “Sometime politics of India doesn’t even originate in its borders, it comes from outside,” he added.
