India’s BBC Raid Is Just Its Latest Attack on Press
The West has indulged PM Narendra Modi while he has coerced and subverted his country’s media.
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Photographer: Arun Chandrabose/AFP/Getty Images
A visit to the BBC’s offices in New Delhi and Mumbai by income tax officials is drawing international attention to the precarious state of press freedoms in India. The government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has described it euphemistically as a “survey,” which is an unsubtle way to characterize a tax raid.
There’s no subtlety to the timing, either: Three weeks ago, the British broadcaster aired a documentary drawing attention to Modi’s alleged role in deadly sectarian riots that wracked his home state of Gujarat in 2002. Modi is notoriously thin-skinned on this front: His government banned the documentary, and tried to block clips on social media platforms as well as screenings in universities.