Congress leader Shashi Tharoor has stuck to the party line on the BBC documentary on the Gujarat riot and said he's surprised at the reaction of the government and called the ban an overreaction. The comments come as the issue led to the resignation of Anil Antony, the son of former Union minister AK Antony as Anil Antony spoke against BBC. On Anil Antony's resignation, Tharoor said he has not spoken to Anil and the issue was not discussed between them. "But he is capable of speaking for himself," Tharoor said to ANI.
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"How can a BBC documentary affect the sovereignty of our nation? The ban is an overreaction and unnecessary by the Centre. We are a strong country. We could have ignored this. Our sovereignty and national security is not something that can be easily affected by a documentary," Tharoor said.
In an interview with journalist Barkha Dutt, Shashi Tharoor on Tuesday detailed his opinion on the issue and the ban imposed on the documentary. Tharoor said both the arguments -- that it undermines the sovereignty of India and that the showing of the documentary will be a possible threat to the public order -- show India in a poor light, Tharoor said. "Frankly, our sovereignty is not so fragile that a BBC documentary can undermine it and what is there in the documentary?" Tharoor said in the video, calling the row an example of Streisand effect.
{{/usCountry}}In an interview with journalist Barkha Dutt, Shashi Tharoor on Tuesday detailed his opinion on the issue and the ban imposed on the documentary. Tharoor said both the arguments -- that it undermines the sovereignty of India and that the showing of the documentary will be a possible threat to the public order -- show India in a poor light, Tharoor said. "Frankly, our sovereignty is not so fragile that a BBC documentary can undermine it and what is there in the documentary?" Tharoor said in the video, calling the row an example of Streisand effect.
{{/usCountry}}Tharoor said it is no news that the UK government conducted an investigation in 2002. "We knew that every embassy was trying to find out what happened -- particularly, embassies whose national may have been caught up in the incidents of Gujarat. The truth is we would do the same. If tomorrow, Indians were killed in riots in England, our embassy would be doing it, as I believe, it did in England after the Leicester violence. It is normal practice," Tharoor said in the interview.
The documentary on Godhra riots critical of Narendra Modi - then chief minister of Gujarat - has triggered a row as the opposition strongly condemned the government's censorship. The government blocked tweets and YouTube videos linking to the documentary while the opposition rebels kept on sharing them. Trinamool MP Mahua Moitra on Wednesday shared the linkj to the second part of the documentary which was aired on January 24.
Added to this BJp vs opposition is the internal trouble in the Congress as Anil Antony exited from the party citing the issue -- after heaping criticisms on the "coterie around the leadership". Taking the name of Rahul Gandhi and his Bharat Jodo Yatra which Antony described as 'a trek to promote lobe', he slammed the hatred and threats that he received for taking a different stand than that of the Congress over the BBC row.