BBC and Modi: text from India Labour Solidarity

1. The international controversy surrounding the BBC documentary “India: The Modi Question”. India’s BJP government has used emergency powers to ban even clips from circulating there, and there is a major right-wing Hindu nationalist agitation against the BBC.
2. That central to the documentary is the 2002 pogrom of thousands of Muslims in the Indian state of Gujarat, of which now prime minister Narendra Modi was then chief minister.
3. That the documentary quotes a report commissioned by the then UK Labour government, which described the Gujarat events as ethnic cleansing and held Modi as directly responsible for it. It also interviews former Labour Home Secretary Jack Straw, who backs this up.

This CLP believes

1. That this documentary and the Indian government’s authoritarian reaction to it reinforces how much our sisters and brothers in India – the labour movement, oppressed communities and castes, the left – need international solidarity.
2. That we must stand in solidarity with groups facing oppression and violence under the right-wing regime in India, and with the Indian labour movement as it fights the assault on workers’ rights the Indian government is also pushing forward. This is particularly important as the Tories – strongly linked to the Modi government – push for a free trade agreement with India.
3. That we must help keep memory of the Gujarat events alive.

This CLP resolves

1. To circulate information about this controversy and about labour movement and social justice struggles in India to our members.
2. To invite a speaker from India Labour Solidarity (https://bit.ly/inlabsol), set up last year to organise solidarity with the labour movement, oppressed communities and castes and the left in India.