Modi Government’s Muzzling of Media Evokes Little Response Abroad

On February 14, officials of India’s Income Tax Department carried out a “survey action” on the offices of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) in New Delhi and Mumbai. Officials combed through records, questioned staff, seized laptops and phones, and cloned computer peripherals. After three days of “surveying” the BBC offices – this was essentially a tax raid – the income tax department issued a press statement alleging that the BBC had evaded taxes on remittances and that there were “discrepancies and inconsistencies with regard to BBC’s transfer pricing documentation.”

The raid on the BBC was part of an ongoing trend in which the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) deploys state agencies to intimidate media outfits and journalists that are critical of its policies and the actions of its leaders. These agencies include the Income Tax Department and the Enforcement Directorate (ED), which probes financial crimes, as well the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). 

While there may have been discrepancies in the BBC’s accounting systems, the tax raid at its offices was likely aimed at sending a chilling message not just to the BBC but to all media outlets that the Indian government will not tolerate negative reporting of its leaders.

Less than a month before the raid, the BBC released a two-part documentary, “India: The Modi Question,” which examined Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s treatment of India’s Muslims, especially his role in the communal riots in Gujarat in 2002. 

Much of what the documentary said has been reported before in horrific detail in the Indian media. What was new, however, was the revelation of a U.K. government-commissioned report, which pointed out that the riots had “all the hallmarks of an ethnic cleansing” and that Modi, who was Gujarat’s chief minister at the time, was “directly responsible for a climate of impunity” that culminated in the death of over 1,000 people, mostly Muslims. 

The BBC documentary riled the Modi government as it came amid its efforts to paint a positive picture of India. Since November 2022, when India took over the presidency of the G-20, the Modi government has been using G-20 meetings and events to project the prime minister domestically as a global statesman and to showcase to the world that India under Modi is an inclusive country that celebrates its diversity. The BBC documentary laid bare to the world the shallowness of those claims.

The government’s response was swift. India’s Ministry of External Affairs slammed the documentary as “a propaganda piece designed to push a particular discredited narrative.” Claiming that the documentary’s “unsubstantiated allegations” were “undermining the sovereignty and integrity of India,” the Ministry for Information and Broadcasting invoked an emergency law to block its broadcast in India and directed YouTube and Twitter to take down links sharing the documentary. 

The government’s crackdown on the BBC is not an isolated incident. Since Modi came to power in 2014, his government has been dismantling media freedoms. It has sought to silence dissent, even the questioning of government policies and the airing of opinions. Tax raids and investigations into alleged financial irregularities are an important part of its arsenal to get the media to toe its line. 

The Modi government has used the same agencies against non-government organizations, think tanks, and civil society organizations and activists that question its policies. Amnesty International, Oxfam India, Greenpeace, and the Center for Policy Research are among hundreds of organizations whose licenses to access foreign funding have been suspended in recent years. 

While many journalists and media outlets have caved in and report the government’s view unquestioningly, the few who resist have suffered for standing up. Dainik Bhaskar, India’s largest circulating Hindi daily, which had carried several reports critical of the Modi government’s handling of the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, saw its revenue from government advertisements fall by 47 percent in 2021-22 compared to the previous financial year. Tax raids were conducted in the offices of NewsClick, Newslaundry, NDTV, Bharat Samachar, Quint, and Greater Kashmir, among others. NewsClick had provided extensive reportage of the farmers’ protests of 2020-2021. 

The fate of NDTV, a broadcaster that pioneered independent television news in India, illustrates just how far the government will go. When tax raids and CBI investigations failed to get the NDTV to cease critical reporting, it was subjected to a hostile takeover by Adani Media Ventures Ltd, the media arm of the Adani Group, whose founder-chairman Gautam Adani is a close associate of Modi.

With the Indian media more or less in its control, the Modi government has turned on the foreign media. Foreign journalists say they have been under pressure from the government for several years now. According to a Western journalist based in New Delhi, who spoke to The Diplomat on condition of anonymity, government officials “delay or deny issuing or extending visas and permission to travel to restricted areas, [and] even hold out the threat of deportation to get journalists to provide positive reportage on the government.” 

In November 2019, journalist Aatish Taseer’s Overseas Citizenship of India status was revoked after an article he published in Time magazine during India’s general elections called Modi the “Divider-in-Chief” of India. Home Ministry officials claimed that Taseer was stripped of his OCI status because he had “concealed the fact that his father was of Pakistani origin.” 

Freelance journalists writing for foreign publications have been forthright in their criticism of the Modi government’s policies, and they are “the most vulnerable to bullying and intimidation by officials” as they do not get support from the publications they write for, the New Delhi-based Western journalist said. The journalist pointed to Rana Ayyub’s experience.

An independent journalist, Ayyub is the author of “Gujarat Files: Anatomy of a Cover-up,” a book that laid bare the bone-chilling motivations and violence of leaders and activists of the Sangh Parivar (an umbrella grouping of Hindutva organizations), including Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah, in the Gujarat riots. She has been not only subjected to vicious trolling on social media, including rape and death threats, but also has been investigated by the government for a range of financial crimes, including money laundering and embezzlement. 

The recent raid on BBC India has deepened apprehensions not only among the broadcaster’s employees but those working for other foreign media outlets as well. An Indian employee of the BBC told The Diplomat that the Modi government has “come under little heat from foreign governments” for its crackdown on the BBC. 

Indeed, it took British officials more than a week to say that they had “raised” the matter of the search of BBC offices during “wide-ranging conversations with the Indian government.” As for the U.S. State Department, spokesperson Ned Price merely said: “We are aware of the search of the BBC offices in Delhi by Indian tax authorities. I would need to refer you to Indian authorities for the details of this search.” 

This “absence of a pushback from Western governments would encourage the Modi government to come down more heavily on journalists in the future,” the Indian BBC employee said. 

Modi has little to worry about from foreign governments.

Amid the war in Ukraine, the big powers are competing for New Delhi’s support. India has emerged a valuable partner in the West’s efforts to counter China’s rise in the Indo-Pacific. And then there is the large Indian market that foreign governments are keen to get a chunk of. Rapping Modi on the knuckles for being intolerant of criticism would hardly work in their favor while negotiating deals. 

On February 14, Air India announced multi-billion dollar deals with Airbus and Boeing for the purchase of 470 aircraft. 

“Thank you @NarendraModi,” tweeted French President Emmanuel Macron. Air India is buying 250 jets from Airbus. A jubilant U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak described the aircraft deal as “a huge win for the UK's aerospace sector.”  

“Today, Air India announced it's purchasing over 200 American-made aircraft,” U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo tweeted. “Boeing’s third biggest sale of all time,” she said, “will support over one million jobs across 44 states.” 

The aircraft deals with India that were announced on February 14 are said to be lifelines for Boeing and Airbus, as well as Rolls Royce, which builds aircraft engines. The deals are expected to create over a million jobs in the U.S., U.K., and France.

That was the same day, incidentally, that Indian officials were raiding the BBC offices in India. 

The near silence from the West on the Modi government’s muzzling of the media is not surprising.