- Thursday, April 25, 2024
By: Shubham Ghosh
Arif Mohammad Khan, the governor of the southern Indian state of Kerala, has hit back at the controversial BBC documentary on prime minister Narendra Modi and the riots in the western state of Gujarat in 2002 asking why its makers did not make a series on atrocities committed by the British.
A governor is a constitutional head of a state in India who is appointed by the country’s president.
The 71-year-old Khan, who has unsuccessfully contested general elections on the ticket of Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the past, said India is doing well and it made the foreign documentary makers feel “disappointed”.
“India is doing so well across world so these people are feeling disappointed. Why didn’t they make a documentary on British atrocities? I feel sorry for some of our own people because they trust a documentary over the verdicts by the judiciary,” Khan was quoted as saying by ANI.
Khan, who is serving as the governor of India’s only Left-ruled state since 2019, also said that he felt sorry for some since they trust a documentary over verdicts given by the judiciary.
His latest statement comes a day after he questioned the release of the BBC series on Modi at a time when India has assumed the presidency of the G20 grouping.
“This is the time when India has assumed the G20 presidency. Why this particular time has been chosen to bring out this documentary? Particularly coming from a source who predicted at the time of our freedom that India is not capable of preserving its freedom, its democracy, and India will be broken into pieces,” Khan said while addressing reporters in state capital Thiruvananthapuram.
The two-part documentary, which claims it investigated certain aspects relating to the 2002 riots when Modi was the chief minister of Gujarat, has been trashed by India’s ministry of external affairs as a “propaganda piece”. The BBC faced criticism from within Britain over the series and UK prime minister Rishi Sunak also stood by Modi in the controversy.
