Pariah no more: Why the row over BBC's Modi coverage is silly

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s fans come in a variety of mind-boggling shapes. From the nameless troll on Twitter spouting one abusive tweet a second against Modi’s critics to the articulate intellectuals on TV panel discussions, our Prime Minister’s supporters are everywhere. The latest to join this bandwagon is Tory MP Priti Patel. Patel has now urged the wider Indian community in Britain to bombard BBC with complaints about its allegedly ‘biased’ coverage of the Indian elections in general and Modi in particular. [caption id=“attachment_1584535” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Narendra Modi. Reuters.[/caption] The senior Indian-origin politician had lodged an official  complaint with BBC over what she has termed its biased, one-sided coverage of India’s new Prime Minister. In a letter addressed to BBC Director General Lord Tony Hall dated 19 May, Priti Patel, who had been appointed as an Indian Diaspora Champion by British Prime Minister David Cameron, said she had received a number of complaints from the Indian community based in the UK in reference to the BBC’s ‘Newsnight’ programme aired on 16 May as part of the results coverage of India’s general election. The Telegraph notes that she specifically wants presenters Mishal Husain and Yalda Hakim to be removed for the ‘irresponsible’ coverage of Narendra Modi. Added to that, she also asked BBC to rephrase the terms in which they referred to Modi. According to Patel, the Indian community in Britain is offended by the association of the term ‘Hindu nationalist’ with PM Modi. They have also strongly protested the channel’s reference to him as a ‘pariah’ who was banned from UK and USA. Much of this rhetoric mirrors that of another British MP, Barry Gardiner, who made waves when he tore apart NDTV’s Nidhi Razdan for daring to suggest that the UK had boycotted Modi for years after the the 2002 riots. And when she incautiously mentioned his “human rights” record, Gardiner went on to school Razdan on what she should and should not be asking about an Indian politician, saying: …It seems you have no respect for your own Supreme Court. The Supreme Court of India has looked at those allegations, I believe, on a number of occasions. And has absolved Mr Narendra Modi completely from those allegations. For you to be bringing them up on Indian television is extraordinarily strange. But as I noted at the time ,“What is extraordinarily strange is a British MP telling Indian citizens and journalists what they may or may not “bring up” about their elected leaders – more so, one who is campaigning to be Prime Minister. Imagine an Indian politician scolding a British journalist for raising questions about Gordon Brown or David Cameron.” Much like Patel, Gardiner too was grandstanding for his home constituency which is more than 50 percent South Asian by attacking the media, albeit of the Indian kind. All this posturing aside, the indignation over  the term “Hindu nationalist” is a bit misplaced since Modi himself has embraced that description, telling a Reuters journalist , “I am nationalist. I’m patriotic. Nothing is wrong. I am born Hindu. Nothing is wrong. So I’m a Hindu nationalist. So yes, you can say I’m a Hindu nationalist because I’m a born Hindu.” As for the word “pariah”, it is a fact that the United States of America and the United Kingdom refused to grant him entry to the countries for years on an end. And it can be argued that offering that history as context for a British audience is fair – however unpleasant that memory for the South Asians who support him. As for the objection to describing Modi as a “controversial figure ", it’s just plain silly. He has been called polarising – which is far stronger word – over and again in the Indian media because that is what Modi is. He inspires great loyalty and loathing, admiration and fear. To pretend otherwise is disingenuous. Patel is also upset that Hakim interviewed artist Anish Kapoor who called Modi a ‘mass murderer’, arguing that Hakim didn’t contest such a sweeping declaration made by the artiste in the show. Certainly, the decision to treat an artist as an expert on Indian politics just because he signed an anti-Modi petition is shoddy journalism – the kind we see often in the West where there is a tendency to reach for the first available Indian (usually a literary type known in the London or New York circles) and ask them to pontificate at length about weighty political issues. The defense offered by Ian Katz, editor of Newsnight that they also invited Modi admirer Swapan Dasgupta to respond to Kapoor’s allegations hardly mitigates that kind of editorial double standard. It is unlikely that the BBC would invite a sculptor to weigh in on the meaning of the results of a British election just because he openly opposed the winning candidate. The biggest mistake here, however, would be to attach much importance to Patel’s attempt to stir up her constituents. For starters, it certainly doesn’t do Modi any good. Now that he has won, and decisively, he is the sovereign leader of the world’s largest democracy. No government can afford to treat him as a pariah. And when he visits the United Kingdom – as he surely will – Modi will want to be viewed as the Prime Minister of India, not as some guy pissed off at the BBC. Modi has moved on, maybe it is time for the likes of Patel to do the same.