Indian protest mark first anniversary of Delhi gang rape. Louis Dowse/Demotix. All rights reserved.It is a test of the new Narendra Modi government in India that despite the Prime Minister’s reassurances he has begun to crack down on several progressive Indian and transnational initiatives whose operations in India the government sees as critical of the government or even “anti-national.”
Among the government’s targets are the usual suspects: groups such as Avaaz, (a “global web movement to bring together people-powered politics to decision-making everywhere”), the environmental activists 350.org India (who have in the past petitioned to stop the reliance on dirty coal power and invest in “energy efficiency and decentralized renewable energy for all”), the Sierra Club, the Bank Information Center (a watchdog group that monitors “high risk or otherwise problematic projects financed by Multilateral Development Banks” such as the World Bank), especially calling attention to lending policies with undesirable environmental effects, and Greenpeace-India.
But the government is also blocking other representations that it regards as presenting the nation in a bad light. Perhaps the most striking instance is its protest and attempt to block the airing of “India’s Daughter,” a controversial BBC documentary about the December 2012 gang-rape of a 23-year-old Indian woman, Jyoti Singh. Indeed, India’s Ministry of Information and Broadcasting banned the film, ironically, because it appeared to “incite violence against women.”
