{"id":52750,"date":"2023-02-19T17:00:02","date_gmt":"2023-02-19T08:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/commentisfree\/2023\/feb\/19\/india-enjoyed-a-free-and-vibrant-media-narendra-modis-brazen-attacks-are-a-catastrophe"},"modified":"2023-02-19T17:00:02","modified_gmt":"2023-02-19T08:00:02","slug":"india-enjoyed-a-free-and-vibrant-media-narendra-modis-brazen-attacks-are-a-catastrophe-kenan-malik","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=52750","title":{"rendered":"India enjoyed a free and vibrant media. Narendra Modi\u2019s brazen attacks are a catastrophe | Kenan Malik"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The prime minister\u2019s cynical raids on the BBC are the latest populist clampdown on a press and broadcasting \u2018elite\u2019<\/p>\n<p>In January, the BBC broadcast a two-part series, <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/programmes\/p0dkb144\" title=\"\">India: The Modi Question<\/a><\/em>, which looked forensically at the role of Narendra Modi in fomenting the Gujarat anti-Muslim riots of 2002 in which at least 1,000 people were killed. Now the prime minister of India, Modi was then the chief minister of Gujarat.<\/p>\n<p>The response in India was swift. Kanchan Gupta, an adviser to the ministry of information and broadcasting, <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/KanchanGupta\/status\/1616745166290976769\" title=\"\">called the documentary<\/a> \u201cpropaganda and anti-India garbage\u201d that \u201creflects BBC\u2019s colonial mindset\u201d. The BJP government invoked emergency laws to ban the documentary and any online links to clips. When students at the Jawaharlal Nehru University tried to screen the documentary, the university authorities <a href=\"https:\/\/www.indiatoday.in\/india\/story\/jnu-cuts-electricity-as-students-try-to-screen-bbc-series-on-pm-modi-2325926-2023-01-24\" title=\"\">cut off electricity<\/a> to the whole campus.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/commentisfree\/2023\/feb\/19\/india-enjoyed-a-free-and-vibrant-media-narendra-modis-brazen-attacks-are-a-catastrophe\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The prime minister\u2019s cynical raids on the BBC are the latest populist clampdown on a press and broadcasting \u2018elite\u2019In January, the BBC broadcast a two-part series, India: The Modi Question, which looked forensically at the role of Narendra Modi in fome&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":838,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1762,458,62,669,238,433,371,61,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-52750","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bbc","category-censorship","category-india","category-journalist-safety","category-media","category-narendra-modi","category-religion","category-south-and-central-asia","category-world-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52750","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/838"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=52750"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52750\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52751,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52750\/revisions\/52751"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=52750"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=52750"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=52750"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}