Blog blockade New

By Raghu Karnad

Lets admit this much: in the larger scheme of things, it wasn't a big deal. On Tuesday, July the 20 th , a day that will go down in the history of slights against people who aren't used to being slighted, it emerged that the Department of Telecommunications had issued directions to major Internet Service Providers to block access to certain websites expressing anti-national sentiments. The Bombay attacks may have had something to do with it. At some point in these communications – which could be called Chinese Whispers for more reasons than one – ISPs got the impression that they ought to block entire internet domains, including Blogspot, host to a huge number of weblogs and many prominent Indian ones, and Geocities, formerly the largest free-of-charge website host. The SMS campaigns – if only someone would ban those – hit the general public on Tuesday night. Wednesday morning, the Gray Lady, global protrectrix of liberalism, was clearing her throat sternly. By Thursday, your correspondent was sick to death of hearing Benjamin Franklin's quote to the effect that any country that will give up a little liberty for a little security deserves neither and will soon lose both. True enough.

Still, everybody knew it wouldn't stick. In spite of it coming on the heels of the I&B Ministry's draconian Broadcast Bill, it was clear that such an action was still uncharacteristic of this government. It took about 48 hours of sheer incredulity before the Department retracted its directions. The whole thing just might be worth it if Telecom Chairman DS Mathur apologizes, which he must, with the maroon-faced embarrassment of somebody who has been asked to empty the bath and is caught holding the baby's head underwater.

Now, justifiably, the baby is screaming for an explanation. There is actually an Article in the Indian Constitution – number 19, perhaps the bureaucrats at Telecom didn't read that far – that says, “All citizens shall have a right to freedom of speech and expression.” It is plausible that nationwide broadcasting and publishing isn't always legally protected by this Article because such protection is made contingent on “ the interests of the sovereignty and integrity of India, the security of the State, friendly relations with foreign States, public order, decency or morality,” so it could be argued that large-scale media has the clout to constitute a threat to any of those interests. To make that argument about anyone's presence on the blogosphere would be difficult. Blogs embody the freedom of speech in a manner more radically democratic and true to the phrasing of Article 19 than any form of media has before, because blogs do not just permit, but also facilitate anyone's expression of their views.

This is for better and for worse. Now that the Department has revoked its directions, it is worth thinking about the real reason blogs should be eliminated. Bloggers are the premature ejaculators of writing. In fictional posterity, it used to be the case that when the spirit moved you, when the muse descended, if you were going to take the time to write, you would really work it, really squeeze the juice out of it. Instead we have an enormous subculture of commentators too lazy or self-deceived to craft their writing into something worth its cost in ink and paper, a deafening global chatter of half-baked ideas and cheaply bought revelations. Meanwhile, our mainstream conventional media is either stuck in a cranky literary senility or a slack-jawed adolescent fixation with tits and ass. Everyone has been saying that India has 40,000 active bloggers. If just ten percent of them negotiated seriously with their writing and with the participatory potential of mainstream media, well, it is something to think about.

It might also be worth finding out whether national productivity spiked during those two days. Enough people in this country work at PCs connected to the internet that, if you follow my math, the ban must have recovered several million working hours that would otherwise have been occupied with the mid-week scandal report courtesy of The Compulsive Confessor (URL courtesy of blogspot). This sort of consideration might explain why princesskimberley.com was one of websites red-flagged by the Ministry (further in their defense, the Princess is not a citizen of India, and thus not protected by Article 19).

It might, finally, be worth focusing on the non-ridiculous aspects of the whole affair. Ridiculous aspects: that a government commission with dubious authority decided to censor the internet, that the decision caused a significant chunk of the blogosphere to vanish, and that it could all be accessed anyway through online anonymizers and proxies. Besides, if you were to do a Google search for any of the blocked content, for instance HinduUnity, the first thing you would find is that it has all been accessibly cached as part of the system on which the search engine relies. The blogs will be back soon; life and updating will go on.

Non-ridiculous aspect: the views expressed on websites like HinduUnity are enough to make any sensible – or at least law-abiding – person recoil. HinduUnity identifies itself as “the Official Site of the Bajrang Dal - VHP Youth Wing.” Among a lot of standard Hindutva-vadi material, the content of the site includes a hit-list of the enemies of Hinduism. The list ranges from Osama and the Pope to Dilip Kumar and SRK, a layman's rolodex of self-hating Hindus and pseudo-secularists in the press, politics and celebrity limelight. It also provides some addresses and phone numbers, a clear incitement to harassment if not something far worse, considering that the information may be intended for cadres of the Bajrang Dal. This is a legal concern that rightly invites the attention of the government and the police.

From one vantage, it seems that the censorship of websites was a minor bungle, symptomatic of the much larger incompetence of the Indian Government at enforcing laws against murder and hate crime. Religious extremists deserve free speech as well, although this may not be the case with incitements to violence. The alarming idea is that a moderate Indian government is busy pulling down websites of saffron fatwa when it should be aggressively prosecuting identifiable murderers and collaborators in the police and state legislatures. That's how you protect the sovereignty and integrity of India and maintain public order – not by saying, “Speak and you will be reliably silenced,” but by saying, “Break the law and you will be reliably penalized.” But it takes political will to protect the Constitution as a unit. When the government censors in the name of public order, you can rest assured that its efforts to enforce public order stop with the scissors and black marker.

The present situation is a left-wing counterpoint to the censorship of Rakesh Sharma's documentary on the Gujarat massacres, when Anupam Kher, the BJP-appointed chairman of the Central Board for Film Certification, decided that the film threatened public order. Until the government changed in 2004, “Final Solution” received no certification but nobody was finally convicted for any of the 2000 murders, either. We are told, over and over, it comes rattling like a snare drum, that even the most responsible government has to censor our speech. In the clamour that follows, we never hear, only because it is a final resort, and everything else is already being done.

Two weeks ago, Shiv Sena leader Uddhav Thackeray made a statement that was very instructive on the use of “law and order” in public discourse. Earlier in the day, a statue of his late mother in Shivaji Park was found smeared with mud, an act that was crude and juvenile and a misdemeanour at best, although it might be said to fall under the rubric of political expression. So anyway, Shiv Sainiks in a number of Maharashtrian cities tromped off to set fire to buses, chuck rocks at shops and block public thoroughfares, while the state government stuck its hands in its armpits and stared at the ground. There would be a strong reaction in the State and the country, Uddhav finally announced, his face flushed from all the exercise, until the government could maintain law and order. At that point he didn't, but should have, taken a bow.