Biden administration makes jibe over India blocking BBC Modi documentary

'We support the importance of a free press around the world,' Ned Price spokesperson of the US Department of State said

President Joe Biden’s administration has subtly expressed its disagreement with the decision of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government in New Delhi to get YouTube and Twitter to block links to a BBC documentary on the 2002 riots in Gujarat.

A spokesperson of the Biden Administration said that the United States had in the past conveyed to India the importance of freedom of expression and human rights for both democracies.

“We support the importance of a free press around the world,” Ned Price, a spokesperson of the US Department of State, told journalists in Washington DC on Wednesday.

He was responding to a question by a journalist from Pakistan about a recently aired BBC documentary, which claimed that a probe by the diplomats of the United Kingdom after the 2002 communal clashes in Gujarat had found that Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who had been the Chief Minister of the State then, had been “directly responsible” for the “systematic campaign of violence”.

The Government of India already dismissed the BBC documentary, titled India: The Modi Question as propaganda designed to push a discredited narrative.

The Modi Government used emergency powers under the Information Technology rules 2021 to block multiple clips of the BBC documentary on YouTube and Twitter.

“We continue to highlight the importance of democratic principles, such as freedom of expression, freedom of religion or belief, as human rights that contribute to the strengthening of our democracies,” Price said, adding: “This is a point we make in our relationships around the world. It’s certainly a point we’ve made in India as well.”

He was apparently referring to the Biden Administration’s talks with the Modi Government on the perception in the US about the backsliding of democracy in India.

Biden’s Secretary of State Antony Blinken had on April 12 last year said that the US was “monitoring some recent concerning developments in India, including a rise in human rights abuses by some government, police, and prison officials”. He had made the remark while sharing the podium with Jaishankar, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and the US Secretary of Defence, Lloyd Austin, during a news conference after the India-US 2+2 dialogue in Washington DC He had followed it up on June 2, 2022, stating that India, the world’s largest democracy and home to a great diversity of faiths, had seen rising attacks on people and places of worship. He made the remark after releasing the US State Department’s 2021 Report on International Religious Freedom. Rashad Hussain, the US Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom, had also said at the same event that some officials in India were “ignoring or even supporting rising attacks on people and places of worship”.

The US State Department’s report also highlighted the purported rise in religious intolerance in India.

Biden, himself, as well as his Vice President Kamala Harris, had subtly nudged the prime minister to protect the democratic principles of India, when they had hosted him in Washington DC on September 24, 2021. The think tanks and nonprofit entities, as well as international organizations, too had been expressing concerns about the alleged erosion of democratic values in India.