Recently, a documentary on the Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi had been making rounds on social media, which allegedly made allegations against Modi for fanning the flames of prejudice against Indian Muslims. The first half of the two-part documentary titled ‘India: The Modi Question’ had aired on BBC Channel on January 17, 2023.
‘India: The Modi Question’ had shown the role of Modi in the 2002 Gujarat riots, when thousands of Muslims were killed. Back then, Modi was the Chief Minister of Gujrat state.
After the documentary was released, it led to an uproar and then the Indian government requested Twitter and YouTube to remove all the links and videos of the documentary. As it’s known to all that Twitter owner Elon Musk has a self-proclaim stance of free speech absolutist. Yet, Twitter removed everything related to the documentary.
Although the documentary hadn’t aired in India, a senior advisor at the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Kanchan Gupta shared that Twitter and YouTube were ordered to block all the links and videos within India by the government. Later he also confirmed that both the social media websites have immediately complied with the directions.
