It is time that the Prime Minister noticed that no democratic leader in the world has worse media managers than he does. Their futile and idiotic attempts to prevent Indians from watching the BBC documentary called ‘India: the Modi question’ is proof that they are goofs. Such big goofs that they appear not to have noticed yet that the Internet has made it impossible to ban anything. Their attempts at blocking the documentary from being shown in India has resulted in more Indians finding out about it and watching it on their phones and laptops. Students in campuses across the country made it a point to do this publicly in large groups and organized protest marches against censorship.
A better strategy would have been for the Prime Minister’s office to ignore the documentary altogether or call a press conference and point out its flaws and falsehoods. As someone who has watched both parts, I can report that there are too many to list here of which the biggest is the charge that Modi was complicit in organizing the violence. This is a charge that has been examined by our Supreme Court and Modi has been exonerated. To repeat the charge makes the BBC guilty of irresponsible journalism.
Modi’s problem is that the mystery men who manage his media relations have no idea that in democratic countries transparency is the way to make friends with the media. Instead, these nameless men have shown more than once that they believe in opacity and in ‘managing’ the media. They have forgotten that managing the media did not work even during the Emergency when the Indian media was just a handful of newspapers.
With their flat-footed attempts at censorship Modi’s media managers confirmed the widespread suspicion in the western media that India’s prime minister is an autocrat who cannot abide criticism. Ironically Modi was failed not just by his media team but by his most ardent supporters. Many popped up on social media and on primetime TV shows to expound upon ludicrous conspiracy theories. Some said that the BBC documentary was part of a western plot against India. Others ranted hysterically about the BBC exhibiting a ‘colonial mindset’. They ended up making not just Modi, but India look pathetic.
This has happened at a time when the Prime Minister is so certain of being the most popular leader in India that his ambitions have expanded now to become a ‘Vishvaguru’. The BJP publicity campaign that has begun already for the next general election indicates that it is the idea of Modi as the leader of the world that could be the fulcrum of his attempt to win a third term in office. His devotees tweet endlessly about how Modi is the only leader who will be able to persuade Russia’s dictator to stop his insane war in Ukraine. And Indian cities are plastered with posters that exalt India’s leadership this year of the G20 into a much bigger thing than it is.
If Modi was handed an unexpected gift last week it was not by his media managers or his devotees but by the Congress Party. It deployed senior spokespersons on social media to declare that there had been a ‘genocide’ of Muslims in Gujarat in 2002 and that Modi had never expressed regret or apologized as Congress leaders had. I found myself in a Twitter war with one of these spokespersons who shut up only when I pointed out that it was not apologies that the Sikhs needed for the thousands killed in the 1984 pogrom but a fair inquiry and punishment of the killers. I noticed from reactions to this Twitter spat that not even Congress spokespersons have any idea that all attempts to order a proper investigation into the pogrom against the Sikhs were stopped at the highest levels of the Congress Party.
So, for the Congress Party to gloat that the BBC documentary was only bringing out the ‘truth’ about Gujarat is reckless because it forces people to remind them of their own murderous record. If Modi had intelligent media managers, they would have concentrated on pointing out that the 2002 riots have been the only time that such violence was fully investigated, and killers and rapists jailed. What happened in 2002 on Modi’s watch used to happen regularly in India when we were supposedly governed by ‘secular’ leaders. If inquiry commissions were ordered into these communal riots, the reports usually came out when people had forgotten the violence and often when the killers had disappeared or died. Mostly Muslims were killed, and nobody called it genocide.
Modi has always believed he was unfairly singled out by the media. He was. Most people do not remember the names of the chief ministers who were in charge when horrible atrocities were committed against Muslims in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. But, instead of making this point on his behalf, his spokespersons and supporters have chosen to make him look like an autocrat and India like a country obsessed with the opinion of our former colonial masters.
Sack your media managers, Prime Minister, and find a team that understands the need for transparency when dealing with the media. The media is too powerful to be managed, even if it is true that fear of tax raids and misuse of preventive detention laws have brought the kind of ‘management’ that shames Indian democracy.
