[Adding to the confusion, the
government acted just weeks after India India
Within hours, social media platforms in India lit up with complaints from people
trying to visit pornography sites only to find either a blank screen or a
cryptic message saying the site had been blocked “per instructions” fromIndia’s
Department of Telecommunications.
Because the government made no official announcement about why
it was censoring so many websites, much remained unclear on Monday about its
intentions, including how it chose which sites to block. According to Internet
service providers in India
Adding to the confusion, the
government acted just weeks after India India
The activist, Kamlesh Vaswani, a lawyer who failed to persuade
the Supreme Court to block online pornography, gave thanks on Monday to Prime
Minister Narendra
Modi for taking a step
that the Supreme Court would not. “Under Prime Minister Modi’s good governance
and the good faith with which this government has been working,” Mr. Vaswani
said in an interview, “they have been instrumental in blocking the 857 websites
that I have been looking to get blocked.”
Mr. Vaswani, 43, a private lawyer from the central Indian state
of Madhya Pradesh, said he decided to begin a legal crusade against online
pornography in response to the brutal gang rape of a
23-year-old womanon a New Delhi
“Nothing can more efficiently destroy a person, fizzle their
mind, evaporate their future, eliminate their potential or destroy society like
pornography,” Mr. Vaswani wrote in his petition to the Supreme Court. “It is
worse than Hitler, worse than AIDS, cancer or any other epidemic,” he added.
“It is more catastrophic than nuclear holocaust, and it must be stopped.”
After the Supreme Court rejected his petition, Mr. Vaswani gave
his list of 857 websites to Pinky Anand, once a top lawyer for Mr. Modi’s Bharatiya
Janata Party and now a top lawyer for Mr. Modi’s government. It was Ms. Anand,
he said, who delivered his list to the Department of Telecommunications.
“Yes, Mr. Vaswani gave me that
list of porn websites,” Ms. Anand said in an interview. “I did not instruct the
ministry to block, but more specifically, take appropriate action.”
Internet providers typically receive a list of a handful of
websites the Department of Telecommunications wants blocked. The order the
department sent on Friday was no different, except this time the list was far
longer and it included many of the most popular pornography sites in the world.
“It is a simple letter
with instructions to block the aforesaid websites,” Dinesh Chandran, an
executive with Asianet Satellite Communication Ltd., said in an interview. The
government gives no explanation for why it wants a website blocked, he said,
and Internet service providers have little choice but to comply. “For us, the
Department of Telecommunications is the government.”
Speaking anonymously,
government officials gave different justifications for blocking the websites.
An official told The Hindustan Times that the affected sites were “found to be
spreading antisocial activities as hyperlinks.” The official did not specify
which activities were deemed antisocial. But in The Times of India, an official
said the ban was temporary, in place only until the government adopted new
regulations to block child pornography.
Either way, the government’s action set off a furious debate.
Some, arguing that the government has no business dictating what Indians watch
online, accused the conservative Hindus who dominate India India
Some experts on India India India India
“It’s not just one incident.
There are numerous battles, all linked to one another, for free speech and
Internet freedom that are being fought in the country right now.”
Suhasini
Raj contributed reporting.
