WHEN INDIA’S STAND ON BBC DREW SHARP UK DIPLOMATIC IRE

An Indian diplomat’s Oxford education was questioned by the British after New Delhi made a thinly veiled criticism of the BBC’s reporting of India and other developing countries at a UN meeting in November 1985.

Declassified documents newly released by the National Archives reveal that India’s statement at the UN special political committee in New York on “Questions Relating to Information” was delivered by an MP, KK Tewari, but had been drafted by the diplomat in the Indian mission, Bhaskar Mitra.

Tewari’s five-page speech did not name the BBC, but a noting by the British on a copy of the speech identifies it as such, and the matter also figured in a sharp note by the British diplomat at the UN, Keith Evetts, to the foreign Office in London, titled “Indian Mischief”.

The note states: “(A) pretty obvious swipe at the BBC...No doubt this comes as no surprise to those who know their Indians better than I do, but I must confess I thought it a rather gratuitous attack. Although the statement was delivered by an Indian MP it was drafted by Mitra, to whom I am beginning to begrudge his Oxford education.”

In the note copied to the British high commission in New Delhi, Evetts added, “I assume he failed to get into Cambridge .... I am now happy for Chancery New Delhi to take any suitable opportunity to drop Mitra in the mire, though subtlety will no doubt be required if I am not to be splattered as well.”

The passage in Tewari’s statement that particularly angered the British side was the veiled reference to BBC: “The world community was recently shocked when it was revealed that an influential news agency in a western country had a system of having its news vetted and approved by the intelligence agency of the country.” India’s statement was delivered at a time when New Delhi was upset at anti-India forces based in the UK being interviewed by the BBC and given space in the British news media.