NEW DELHI: Within an hour of a raiding party from the Income Tax Office swooping down on the BBC’s premises in Delhi and Mumbai, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party launched a boorish attack on the British public broadcaster.
Speaking in his official capacity as a national spokesperson of the BJP, Gaurav Bhatia described the BBC as ‘bhrasht, bakwas corporation’ (corrupt, claptrap corporation) and listed a short – though very odd – inventory of its supposed misdeeds. Insulting Mahatma Gandhi by saying he “failed in his attempt to liberate India in 1946” is one of the three ‘charges’ he levelled – though that is arguably more a statement of fact than an insult since India actually won its freedom only in 1947 .
Other BJP leaders have accused the BBC of insulting the Supreme Court of India by producing a documentary reminding viewers about the questionable role Narendra Modi played as chief minister of Gujarat during the 2002 anti-Muslim riots.
Since the unofficially made ‘official’ claim is that the tax raid on the BBC has nothing to do with the Modi documentary, we must thank the BJP and its over-eager spokespersons for connecting the dots. As it is, only a fool or an apologist for the government will try and pretend the Income Tax authorities just happened to stumble upon evidence of tax evasion by the BBC within a month of the documentary’s telecast.
Enough has been said and written about the Modi government’s ongoing attacks on media freedom and democracy but the latest offensive raises three noteworthy points.
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The first is that Western democracies which swear by press freedom and the importance of ‘shared values’ are too busy looking for business deals and geopolitical props to care a farthing about what the Modi government is doing on the ground.
The BBC is owned by the British people, and Modi’s attempts to strong-arm the Beeb ought to have drawn some kind of a public response from its government. Unfortunately, Rishi Sunak was more interested in how Britain would benefit from Air India’s huge order for aircraft from Airbus. The US and France, whose leaders spoke to Modi on the day he unleashed his taxmen, have no direct stake in the BBC but ought to know that the weapons being deployed against one media platform will eventually be deployed against others. Already, French correspondents in India are having a tough time getting their press visas processed and at least one US-based reporter was denied entry into India despite having valid papers. Yet Joe Biden and Emmanuel Macron remain as unconcerned about the state of media freedom in India as their British counterpart. That such a brazen attack on the BBC could come with just a fortnight to go before the G20 foreign ministers meet in India is an indication of how confident Modi feels about the West’s continuing silence.
