Amid protests by the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (BJYM) activists, the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS)’s student union Progressive Students Forum (PSF) cancelled the scheduled screening of the controversial BBC documentary "India: The Modi Question", on Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday evening.
Informed sources in the PSF attributed the cancellation of the controversial documentary's screening to the intense pressure from the Mumbai police and the TISS management, and also the organisers’ failure to take the film print and projector to the screening venue owing to the protests by the BJYM.
However, the sources said that after cancelling the scheduled screening, some students circulated among the fellow students at the TISS the video of the film through mobile, laptops and tablets for viewing.
The TISS management had on Thursday issued an advisory to the students warning them of strict action if they held screening of the controversial documents.
Despite the warning, the PSF was planning to go ahead and hold the screening of the documentary as a “symbolic protest” in view of the Government’s decision to order YouTube to take down copies of the documentary and asked Twitter to remove the posts related to the film.
Having taken cognisance of the development, the local police had also warned the students against screening the controversial documentary on the TISS premises.