Information Madness

It is not the case of one angry Indian against Facebook or Google. The entire internet freedom is on trial in India.  The state backed censorship of Salman Rushdie at the Jaipur Literary Festival has grabbed the headlines as `The Republic bows before the Mob’. A serious free speech drama has been quietly played out. It all started with Vinay Rai, Editor of a Delhi based Urdu daily called `Akbari’, filing a criminal complaint in a district court in New Delhi.

Rai has been digging the internet for dirt. He found it on almost all the social networking channels. Rai filed a criminal complaint against Microsoft, Google and Washington Post. He filed the complaint as a public interest move from secular India. He wanted all these sites to remove content that offended India. It looked like he was the sole arbiter of offensive content. His major grouse was that all these sites were outlining a conspiracy to defame India with an intention to spread communal violence and destabilize the country.

Anyone familiar with the internet would probably make him the target of a laughing stock. Some are calling it extremism for shock value. Indian authorities seem to be backing him. India is aspiring to become another China.  Can India copy the totalitarian regime of China with a dictatorial justice system and a filtered internet? Can India enforce extreme punishment after a blanket media censorship?

Delhi High Court is playing along and has declared that it would not be soft and would like to think in terms of blocking all these social networking sites.