Visva Bharati students to screen BBC series on PM Modi during Rajnath’s visit, BJP calls move ‘insult’
A section of students at West Bengal’s Visva Bharati University announced that they will screen the controversial BBC documentary- “India; The Modi Question” on Thursday evening.
On campus at a time when Defence Minister Rajnath Singh is scheduled to visit the varsity. Rajnath Singh will participate in a few programmes at the varsity, including the convocation ceremony.
The Defence Minister and Union Minister of State for Education Subhas Sarkar are scheduled to arrive at Bolpur-Santiniketan late Thursday evening and attend the convocation ceremony scheduled on Friday morning.
Though Bolpur police has not given any permission for the screening of the documentary, DSA is keen to screen it. They have already started campaigning for the screening of the documentary in Bolpur. Police has cautioned the members of DSA not to screen the documentary.
The students have decided to screen the BBC documentary in Ratanpalli Nimtala ghat inside Viswabharati campus at 6 pm today, which is a stone’s throw away from the venue of the cultural program where Rajnath Singh is scheduled to watch Tagore’s musical Bhanu Singher Padavali at the same time.
According to a DSA leader, as soon they heard that the Defence minister was coming to Viswabharati, they decided to screen the documentary to express silent protest against freedom of expression.
The move has been criticised by the BJP. BJP’s Birbhum district President Dhruba Saha said that a member of a students’ wing “with Maoist affiliation” had deliberately planned this screening at the time of the Defence Minister’s visit just to insult him.
“These fake leftists tried to create a similar ruckus within Jawaharlal Nehru University at New Delhi over this documentary. However, the people of India do not trust them and they are totally isolated from the people,” he claimed.
Rajnath Singh is scheduled to arrive today at around 5 pm in Visva Bharati. He is scheduled to watch a cultural programme at around 6.30 pm and then will participate in a meeting with Vidyut Chakroborty, Vice Chancellor of Visva Bharati. Tomorrow, Rajnath Singh will be the chief guest of the convocation program of the University.
The documentary was screened earlier in Presidency University and Jadavpur University by the Left students’ wing, SFI, without any permission from varsity authorities.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is also the chancellor of the central university, virtually addressed the last convocation ceremony on February 19, 2021.
BBC DOCUMENTARY ROW
The two-part documentary “India: The Modi Question” features the role of Prime Minister Narendra Modi who was the chief minister of the state during the 2002 riots. The ruling government thrashed the documentary and termed it as a “propaganda piece” that lacks objectivity and reflects a colonial mindset.
On January 21, the government had issued directions to block multiple YouTube videos and Twitter posts sharing links to the documentary. Several opposition parties slammed the government’s action and said they would oppose any censorship.
The Supreme Court has dismissed a plea seeking the imposition of a complete ban on the BBC in India in the wake of the controversial documentary, terming the petition “entirely misconceived” and “absolutely meritless”.