India Banning Some Blogs
The Indian government has taken steps to ban certain blogs. Indian bloggers are not at all happy with the action.
The country's 153 internet service providers (ISP) have blocked 17 websites since last week on federal government orders.
Some of these sites belong to Google's Blogspot, a leading international web log hosting service.
Indian bloggers say that the decision is an attack on freedom of speech.
A number of them have started filing petitions under the country's new landmark freedom of information law which gives citizens the right to access information held by the government.
Bloggers say the ban has meant that people do not even have access to blogs like the one set up to help the relatives of the victims of the recent train bombings in Mumbai (Bombay), www.mumbaihelp.blogspot.com.
And reaction from the Times of India's own blog is very negative indeed.
Closer home, the paranoia that has set in the government in the aftermath of the criticism it received for policies like being soft on terror, foreign policy flip-flops and reservations has made it take this rather draconian step. It seems that the government instead of trying to listen to the voice of the people wants to gag it. This is not the first time that the Congress has tried to breach the freedom of speech. The Indira Gandhi government was notorious for what it did to the media during the emergency. With remnants of the ‘Young Turks’ of the time still very much present in the decision-making of this government, it is easy to see where the idea got its origins. The government fears that the communally loaded messages of some blogs are detrimental for the nation’s fragile communal harmony. While one must concede that there are a few rotten apples in every sphere, to typecast blogging, per se, as being anti national, is a bit over the top. If anything, blogging initiates healthy debate, which must be encouraged in every democracy. And if the government cannot stand the heat of what its citizens have to say, then they should do a rethink on their policies rather than go after the voice that has raised an opinion. The government has also pointed out to the banning of blogs that can cause damage to relations with other nations. The reality is that a blog is just an opinion; it does not have the power to alter the mood of a foreign nation to become hostile towards us. Rather it is politicians on both side of the divide that spread hatred towards our own citizens or other nations, a vitriolic Narendra Modi or Pravin Togadia, or a narrow minded Arjun Singh are more detrimental to this country than any blog.
The UPA with this order to gag the web and trying to alter the Broadcast Bill to make it more stringent towards the media is unnecessarily venturing into areas where it is bound to face tough resistance. This at a time when they should be more concerned about the nations’ security and the rising tensions within its own alliance. By trying to curb freedom of expression they might ultimately manage to antagonize the last remaining support for itself and thereby hasten the downfall of its very existence with out of sync policies like blocking blogging and gagging the media.
This is real censorship and India should lift this ban. (One thing I was very interested to learn because of this story breaking is that there are an estimated 50 million internet users in India. Wow - that is a low number for such a huge population.)
Blogosphere | Gaius Thursday, 20 July , 2006
By Roland Hesz, Thursday, 20 July , 2006 @ 6:26 am
And they done it badly.
Apparently, only people using Indian Govt. Net providers are blocked from the sites.
Investigating further, I realized that cable net connectors allow logging on to blogspot, while MTNL, Dial-up MTNL, VSNL, etc. dont, being government providers.
Terrorism casts its shadow on the internet