A group of 13 former judges, 133 ex-bureaucrats, including diplomats, and 156 veterans on Saturday termed the BBC documentary on Prime Minister Narendra Modi as reeking of motivated distortion that is "as mind-numbingly unsubstantiated as it is nefarious".
The statement they issued said the documentary ignores that the Supreme Court of India had unambiguously ruled out any role of Modi in the Gujarat riots of 2002, rejecting allegations of complicity and inaction by the state government headed by him.
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They said that the BBC documentary calls the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) unfair to Muslims when it is a law to help minorities facing religious persecution in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh and has nothing to do with Indian Muslims. "Similarly, Article 370 was a temporary provision of the Constitution of India, never meant to be permanent. Thus, its removal was in no manner a violation of constitutional norms," the statement said.
They claimed the documentary is the archetype of past British imperialism in India, setting itself up as both judge and jury to resurrect Hindu-Muslim tensions that were overwhelmingly the creation of the British Raj policy of divide and rule. Former Rajasthan High Court chief justice Anil Deo Singh, former home secretary L C Goyal, former foreign secretary Shashank, former RAW chief Sanjeev Tripathi and former NIA director Yogesh Chander Modi are among the signatories to the letter.
"BBC's 'India: The Modi Question: Delusions of British Imperial Resurrection? Not this time. Not with our leader. Not with India. Never on our watch," they said. "Regardless of whom you, as an individual Indian, might have voted for, the Prime Minister of India is the Prime Minister of your country, our country. We cannot allow just about anyone to run amok with their deliberate bias, their vacuous reasoning..."