Social media giants Twitter and YouTube on Saturday blocked multiple videos and posts sharing links to the controversial BBC documentary “India: The Modi Question”, after the Centre directed them to take them down.

India has dubbed the documentary a “propaganda piece, designed to push a particular discredited narrative” with the “continuing colonial mindset blatantly visible”.

The Centre told YouTube and Twitter to take down fresh links of the documentary if some people upload or tweet them again, sources said.

More than 300 retired judges, bureaucrats and armed service veterans, in the meantime, released a statement strongly condemning the BBC series which, they said, “reeks of motivated distortion that is as mind-numbingly unsubstantiated as it is nefarious”.

“So, now we have the archetype of British past imperialism in India setting itself up as both judge and jury, to resurrect Hindu-Muslim tensions that were overwhelmingly the creation of the British Raj policy of divide and rule,” the statement reads.

The two-part BBC documentary claims it investigated certain aspects relating to the 2002 Gujarat riots when Prime Minister Narendra Modi was the Chief Minister of the State.

The directions to the two social media majors were issued by Apurva Chandra, Secretary, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, on Friday using the emergency powers under the IT Rules, 2021.

Sources said senior officials of several Ministries, including External Affairs, Home Affairs, and Information and Broadcasting, examined the documentary and found it to be an attempt to cast aspersions on the authority and credibility of the Supreme Court, sow divisions among various Indian communities, and make unsubstantiated allegations regarding actions of foreign Governments in India.

They said the documentary was found to be undermining the sovereignty and integrity of India, and having the potential to adversely impact friendly relations with foreign States as also public order within the country.

A Supreme Court-ordered probe had found no evidence of wrongdoing by Modi during his time as the Chief Minister of Gujarat when the riots broke out in February 2002.

The Ministry of External Affairs had a couple of days ago described the BBC documentary as a “propaganda piece” that lacked objectivity and reflected a colonial mindset.

“Let me just make it very clear that we think this is a propaganda piece designed to push a particular discredited narrative. The bias, the lack of objectivity, and frankly a continuing colonial mindset, are blatantly visible,” External Affairs Ministry Spokesman Arindam Bagchi said on Thursday responding to questions on the documentary.

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak too has distanced himself from the series, saying he “doesn’t agree with the characterisation” of his Indian counterpart after a Pakistan-origin MP Imran Hussain raised it in the UK Parliament.

Lord Rami Ranger, a member of House of Lords of UK Parliament, slammed BBC for its biased reporting, tweeting, “@BBCNews You have caused a great deal of hurt to over a billion Indians. It insults a democratically elected@PMOIndia Indian Police & the Indian judiciary. We condemn the riots and loss of life & also condemn your biased reporting.”

Trinamool Congress MP Derek O’Brien’s tweet was one of those removed by Twitter. “Censorship. Twitter has taken down my tweet of the BBC documentary. It received lakhs of views. The one-hour BBC documentary exposes how PM hates minorities,” O’Brien alleged.

“The UK Government’s position on this has been clear and long-standing and hasn’t changed, of course, we don’t tolerate persecution where it appears anywhere but I am not sure I agree at all with the characterisation that the honourable gentleman has put forward to.”

Both YouTube and Twitter complied with the Government after directions were reportedly issued by Secretary, Information and Broadcasting on Friday using the emergency powers under the IT Rules, 2021.

“Yet again, the staple, dyed-in-the-wool negativity and unrelenting prejudice of the BBC toward India has resurfaced as a documentary, “India: The Modi Question”. This production, the BBC claims, has been “rigorously researched according to the highest editorial standards”, and “examines the tensions between India’s Hindu majority and Muslim minority and explores the politics of India’s PM Narendra Modi in relation to those tensions” and “a series of controversial policies” implemented by him,” a letter signed by the veterans said.

So now we have the archetype of British past imperialism in India setting itself up as both judge and jury, to resurrect Hindu-Muslim tensions that were overwhelmingly the creation of the British Raj policy of divide and rule. Not only is the BBC series, judging from what we have seen of it so far, based on delusional and evidently lopsided reporting, but it presumes to question the very basis of the 75-year-old edifice of India’s existence as an independent, democratic nation, a nation which functions according to the will of the people of India,” the letter said.

“Glaring factual errors apart, the series — which uses the words ‘allegedly’ and ‘reportedly’ repeatedly, (not ‘factually’) — reeks of motivated distortion that is as mind-numbingly unsubstantiated as it is nefarious,” it added.

“This is demonstrated most vividly by its completely sidelining the core fact that the apex judicial institution of India, the Supreme Court of India, has unambiguously ruled out any role of Modi in the Gujarat violence of 2002, while firmly rejecting allegations of complicity and inaction by the then Gujarat State Government headed by Chief Minister Modi,” the letter said.

A group of 302 former judges, ex-bureaucrats and veterans on Saturday slammed a BBC documentary on Modi as a “motivated charge sheet against our leader, a fellow Indian and a patriot” and a reflection of its “dyed-in-the-wool negativity and unrelenting prejudice”.

They claimed it is the archetype of past British imperialism in India setting itself up as both judge and jury to resurrect Hindu-Muslim tensions that were overwhelmingly the creation of the British Raj policy of divide and rule.

The two-part BBC documentary “India: The Modi Question” claims it investigated certain aspects relating to the 2002 Gujarat riots when Modi was the Chief Minister of the State. The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting has issued directions for blocking multiple YouTube videos and Twitter posts sharing links to the BBC documentary, according to sources.