India waging a wrong war over internet

China does it often. So does Belarus, Uzbekistan, Iran, Pakistan, Burma and a host of other authoritarian nations. Now we have a new member to this club – India.

We are talking about governments that censor the internet – in this case, banning the blogs and websites.

Following the aftermath of the recent Mumbai bomb blasts, the Indian government has instructed its Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to block a handful of sites which host blogs, including the popular Blogspot, Typepad and Yahoo Geocities. However overzealous officials have hit a blanket ban on over millions of blogs in India.

There is confusion here. ZDNet India said that Indian government officials have reportedly admitted to ordering three or four sites that host blogs to be blocked. However bloggers believe as many as 22 sites are being blocked.

As a result of this, a massive debate on internet censorship in India has arisen. Some bloggers have threatened to sue the government while other resourceful ones have quickly found ways to beat the ban.

After days of uncertainty, the government – through its Ministry of Communications and Information Technology – finally clarified the ban. On Thursday, all ISPs were ordered to lift the blanket ban and “provide unhindered access to internet except for the websites/webpages which have been specifically mentioned in its orders issued from time to time”.

Perhaps the government should also consider some form of action against these incompetent ISPs who were just supposed to block 20 blogs, and not the entire domain.

Anyway, the government clarification is good. Now Indian bloggers are once again free to express their thoughts in the cyberspace without fear or favour, except for a handful of miscreants who use their blogs to communicate messages of destruction.

But hang on. For me this is where the real issue starts. India, being a model democratic nation, is surely not worried about a bunch of yahoos trying to pass their terror aspirations online.

As an Indian journalist had mentioned, how can these 20 ‘offending’ blogs affect the sovereignty and integrity of India? I would have thought that any government would have loved to monitor such blogs (or websites) to keep track the minds of these people rather than closing down these channels and fumble in the dark for intelligence.

The list of the banned blogs and websites are mentioned here, along with an authorization letter from the Indian government.

The list includes a Hindu unity site, a human rights site and what appears to be a Japanese site! Even more mystifying is that one banned blog is actually a site where people can go for information after the blasts. Now this banned site – Mumbai Help – has moved to another server and is functioning as usual. I just wonder how effective the ban is in the first place.

This episode just goes to show that knee jerk reactions by any government are bad. The Americans did it by waging war against terrorism (and Afghanistan and Iraq). The Indians haven’t been that bad, but still they are, for the moment, waging a war against freedom of expression.

Blogger Ravish summed up the situation neatly. He said:

"Governments of other countries are offering free municipal wi-fi Internet access, our great nation is still struggling to provide basic facilities like power and water... bloggers are already affected by massive power cuts... now [the] government is trying to kick them with the ban?"