India’s large population and increasing teledensity, especially in urban pockets, has spurred an impressive jump in the number of people online. Moreover, a recent report released by the Internet and Mobile Association of India and IRIS Knowledge Foundation has revealed that of India’s 543 constituences, 160 can be termed as ‘high impact’ — that is, they will most likely be influenced by social media in the next general elections. As the report explains, high impact constituencies are those where the numbers of Facebook users are more than the margin of victory of the winner in the last Lok Sabha election, or where Facebook users account for over 10% of the voting population. The study then goes onto declare 67 constituencies as medium-impact, 60 as low-impact and 256 as no-impact constituencies.

The study certainly seems to echo the general euphoria over social networking as a political tool. However, the number of Facebook users might not translate into any change in voting patterns -– in fact, for all we know most the 78 million Facebook users in India might not be interested in politics at all. The study, however, clearly seems to signal that the ability to connect with voters through this medium indicates that political impact could be high.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has been the first national political party to have embraced technology to reach out to voters, with a Twitter account, Facebook page, YouTube channel, mobile app and live streaming over the internet. Its controversial leader Narendra Modi –- who some believe could become India’s next prime minister -– has over 1,600,000 followers. Modi has also been quick to embrace digital technology including a 3D projection of an address in 53 places in the country at the same time. India’s other big national political party, the Congress Party is catching up. Media and IT cells have been set up with an eye towards elections, and one of their star politicians on social media, Shashi Tharoor, has over 1,700,000 followers.

There is some merit to this strategy, although in a nascent stage. Right now, there is a small but very active Twitter base in India that is highly political and there are constant fights between the right-wingers and the rest, which can be read as BJP-Congress fights. Major political episodes in the country become trending topics and both sides are able to make TV news headlines quite regularly. However, at this point it would be safe to assume that most middle class Indians experience political activity on Twitter through news reports on TV than actually by engaging with the medium themselves.

Even the politicians who have invested in social media are quite realistic about what it can do for them. Many of them, including Shashi Tharoor and Orissa-based politician Jay Panda admit that people from their own constituency are not following them on Twitter. Therefore, while they can reach a large number of people through the medium, as yet, they cannot swing an election based on social media.

As the middle class expands, more Indians are expected to get online. Young people are digital natives, and those who can afford smartphones are addicted to them. The general feeling is that politics needs to adapt to the habits and lifestyle of this demographic, and perhaps in that enthusiasm its real role gets overplayed in the media.

However, there is good reason to believe the future is closer than we might imagine. A recent election in the ‘modern’ city of Bangalore saw all politicians engage heavily with social media. And, India’s huge anti-corruption movement led by activist Anna Hazare and his colleague Arvind Kejriwal in April 2012 was almost entirely fuelled by media support and a very engaged online stategy. The movement led to an anti-corruption bill being tabled in Parliament. Many of the members of that movement have now formed the Aam Aadmi Party (literally translated into ‘ordinary man’ party) and rely very heavily on social media to reach their constituency – the middle class. However, Kejriwal only has just over 300,000 followers on Twitter, especially when compared to BJP’s Modi or Congress’s Tharoor. Kejriwal’s erstwhile movement, India Against Corruption has under 1,000,000 likes on Facebook. For a movement that aims to represent all of the middle class, the numbers don’t yet show their true potential.

And in the end, that might well be the final analysis of social media in India right now. The numbers, while impressive, do not yet indicate deep engagement and involvement in the political sphere. In 2014, politicians might do well to remember a computer screen is no match for campaigning in the heat and dust of the smallest corners of the country. Because, truly, that’s where their people are.

More India Coverage >>>

• Saradha Group scandal exposes ties between India’s media, politicians
• The big issues for Indian web users
• India: Kumar versus the censor

The post Will social media be a game changer for Indian politics? appeared first on Index on Censorship.

The firm in question, Saradha Group, had risen to become a financial empire over the past eight years under boss and owner Sudipta Sen. The company has business interests ranging from construction to travel to exports and agriculture. When the “chit fund” scandal came to light — with an estimated loss of $4-6 billion (US) to investors — Sen fled to Jammu and Kashmir, where he was ultimately arrested.

A chit-fund scandal, or “cheat fund” as some sections of the media are calling it, operates like a ponzi scheme. Sen duped many small and middle class investors into giving him their life savings, with promises of great returns. He managed to evade the regulators by using a nexus of companies to launder the money. The money collected was used to recklessly invest in a range of industries — including a mismanaged media empire. The government of West Bengal has had to set up a $2.5 million fund to ensure that the small investors are not bankrupted.

In a letter to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), Sen claims to have been misled by a group of individuals who cheated investors by using his name, unbeknownst to him. However, the letter also shows how political patronage is obtained through acquiring media houses.

Saradha Group owns 18 newspapers and TV channels in West Bengal and Assam. These include Bengal Post, Sakalbela, Kalam, Paroma, Azad Hind, Prabhat Varta, Seven Sisters Post – and the TV channels, Tara Musik, Tara Newz, South Asia TV, and Channel 10, all under the umbrella of Saradha Printing and Publishing Pvt Ltd.

As Indian media blog the Hoot reports, “many senior journalists then suspected that media ownership was a matter of business strategy to establish the company’s credentials and also a bid to emerge as the mouthpiece of the major political party and perhaps get benefits in return.”

This view is supported by BBC journalist Sudhir Bhowmik, who says he left a job with the Saradha Group after he was told to “go soft on some leaders.”

It appears that Sen bought and built a media empire, allegedly on the behest of politicians of the ruling Trinamool Congress party, to play the part of a proganda-spinning machine for the government. This is no small feat – the net worth requirement of an applicant seeking to launch a news channel had been raised by the government from approximately $555,500 to $3,703,000, ostensibly to keep away “fly by night” operators away. But since Sen had already raised his financial portfolio, by dubious financial practises as we know now, he was able to take this step to becoming a media baron.

The curious case of the Saradha Group media empire gets murkier as the story unravels. In his letter to the CBI, Sen also claims to have been regularly blackmailed by Kunal Ghosh and Srinjoy Bose — two sitting Trinamool Congress members of the Upper House — into setting up his news channels. He also says he paid Ghosh $28,000 USD a month. Ghosh, now on the back foot, claims that he was simply a “salaried employee” and that he had “no authority to sign cheques.”

Sen’s use of the media empire to build political clout and protection is now being outlined by the national media. Influential members of West Bengal’s ruling Trinamool Congress party have been closely aligned with the media group. But some politicians are now distancing themselves from the group, despite having benefited from positive propaganda from its media outlets.

In India, which now has over 800 private satellite channels, media houses often favour particular political parties, and many are actually directed owned by politicians themselves. Amid growing unease, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting has asked all channels to furnish details of their shareholding patterns and equity share. Both the ministry and the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) have been looking to ways to ensure pluralism and diversity in the Indian media, and curbing monopolistic growth. They feel tracking ownership patterns might be one way of finding out which groups and individuals are involved in unethical behaviour like corporate and political lobbying, biased analysis and forecast in the political arena and sensationalism of news. The ministry has made it clear that if it finds any media group in violation of its license agreement – including shareholding patterns – it is ready to cancel licenses.

Meanwhile, another unfortunate result of the scandal is that more than 1,400 journalists are out of jobs, while some of Sen’s Channel 10 employees have filed a complaint with the police over non-payment of salaries by Sen and Ghosh.

The post Saradha Group scandal exposes ties between India’s media, politicians appeared first on Index on Censorship.

The subject has been intermittently making headlines in India, with a number of politically motivated arrests made under the Information Technology Act’s controversial Section 66a. Causing more confusion, in 2011, the Minister for Communications & Information Technology, Kapil Sibal, made headlines by asking social media intermediaries to take down “objectionable” content.

At the time, the content in question seemed to be mainly objectionable to to the government itself. The content in question seemed to be mainly objectionable to the government alone.

This caused a huge public uproar, and since then Sibal has exercised more caution, though still maintaining that “the country must have an enabling framework — rules and regulations must not come in the way of the growth of the net.”

As well as Index on Censorship, the roundtable in Bangalore brought together a number of actors, including analysts from social media giants Facebook and Google, as well as Change.org, Wikimedia India Foundation, Medianama, Digital Empowerment Foundation, Open Governance India, Knowledge Commons, Alternative Law Forum, Center for Internet and Society, Tactical Tech, researchers from IIM Bangalore and Aziz Premji University. Journalists from The Hindu, Hindustan Times, DNA and smaller media organisations like Oorvani Media, Mahiti and The Alternative also took part in the debate.

The overall discussion centered around a few key issues, the first being whether the law “protects” free speech as it stands today. Many of those present felt that while Section 66a of The Information Technology Act 2000, which protects against “annoyance, inconvenience, danger, obstruction, insult, injury, criminal intimidation, enmity, hatred, or ill will…” has been misused in the past, it needs to be examined from different angles, such as protecting women from online abuse.

While some writers have outright rejected this argument, the Internet Democracy Project released a draft paper on the subject. In it, they revealed that women think of the internet — social media — as “the street” where they can be taunted and abused in a similar manner to real life. In fact, drawing on the experiences of writer Meena Kandasamy and singer Chinmayi Sripada, who have faced violent abuse on social networks, the panel discussed ways to fend off misogyny that did not involve the law. These included using humour, blocking people, ignoring the comments, and even asking or waiting for others to come to your defence.

Interestingly, many women who were questioned for the study revealed that they prefer not to go to their families to report the abuse, for fear that they would be told to stop spending so much time online. The women and their families also said they had little confidence in going to the police with the same complaints.

This led the panel to discuss beyond the validity of the law — and question the role and capacity of the police in enforcing controversial measures like Section 66a. Some felt that 95 per cent of police on the front lines were not even aware of free speech issues, or the law in question, while others believed that police reforms are the way forward.

Some were unsure if they wanted the police to be tech savvy in the future, suggesting that it could lead to more arrests than there are today. It was agreed that there needs to be more research on the law as it functions today, to understand the crucial role the police will play in upholding it, particularly regarding the role the judiciary currently plays.

The question of defamation was also raised, with some panelists believing that there needs to be a distinction between those who have a small number of followers versus those who have a large following. Can the punishment be the same, if the effect of their status update or tweet is not?

Other discussions assessed challenges to freedom of speech at state level rather than national level and whether or not the mainstream media is forcefully supportive of free speech on the internet. The panelists debated the issue of anonyminity, and whether it is the cause or the solution to some of the free speech issues we see today.

An issue was raised surrounding how internet users are not a core constituency for the government right now; a fact reflected in the budget of the Ministry of Information and Technology, which chooses to focus areas such as computer hardware.

Another question circulating the room was whether strict laws such as Section 66a were designed with the intention to shape the internet a certain way, so that future users simply fall into line. The government’s perspective on the internet’s purposes was also explored, examining whether the National Broadband Network, currently being laid out to connect rural India, was viewed simply as a delivery service platform or for two-way communication.

Two questions that prompted considerable debate were “what is the role — actual or desired — of non legal actors such as intermediaries, pressure groups; the public at large” and “what non-legal strategies can we develop to protect free speech and who should implement such strategies?”

Some suggestions were to try out a “naming and shaming” site or Tumblr account for hate speech, although there were doubts as to how effective it would be. Other panelists advised that intermediaries could reveal more data that could save the government from taking drastic measures — for example, if a certain video was not being heavily viewed from within India, then the government would not feel the need to censor/block a website as it does now.

It was clear that civil society members and even the intermediaries are grappling with the same questions as the government. While a section of Indian society is firmly opposed to laws like Section 66a, there are discussion platforms to help understand how to operate within the constraints of the law.

The post The big issues for Indian web users appeared first on Index on Censorship.

Indian filmmaker Ashvin Kumar is in a curious position. His documentary, Inshallah Kashmir, recently won this year’s India’s National Award for “Best Investigative Film”. Kumar also won the 2012 National Award for “Best Film on Social Issues”, for his documentary Inshallah Football. Despite the press and adulation he has received, Kumar is still struggling to have his films screened on TV. Even the public service broadcaster refuses to air his films as they have received an “A” (Adult) certificate — a “polite” form of censorship, as Kumar told Index.

Kumar’s story begins in Kashmir, the backdrop for both of his films. His first film, tracking the journey of young footballers trying to arrange visas to attend a tournament in Spain, exposed raw nerves within Kashmiri society. What should be a simple process for any talented footballer became an ordeal for one young boy, who was refused a visa for having a surrendered militant for a father. Out of this story came Kumar’s next documentary, a raw and in-depth look at the Kashmiri people, including those who participated in militancy against the Indian government in the 1990s.

When Kumar applied to the Censor Board to approve Inshallah Football in 2010, his application got rejected outright, despite an early indication that he would get approval. This, after he had been assured by the Board that certification was only a formality at this point. In 2011, the Censor Board eventually awarded Kumar’s film Adult (A) certification. Confused, Kumar filed a RTI (Right to Information) request and was told that the Board felt the characters were not authentic. The board also felt Kumar’s film was too critical of the government.

What bothers Kumar is the “quasi ban” that results from the A-certificate, a decision normally reserved for feature films with gross violence and nudity. The film, which amazingly went from censored by the government to being honoured by it, can’t be shown on TV because of its alleged adult content. At the time Kumar stated in an extremely frank interview:

“The cynical view is that they are now trying to come across as more equal and liberal than they are. Some other filmmakers I’ve spoken to said this is exactly what they do. They first ban it, and then when they see that public opinion is not working in favour, they give it a National Award. I hope we got the National Award on the merit of the film and not because of political reasons.”

Worried that his next venture would be met with the same fate, especially since Inshallah Kashmir deals directly with militancy and its fallouts in Kashmir, Kumar decided to release it online for one day, 26 January 2012, India’s Republic Day. At the moment, the film has both an “A” certification and despite its honour from the government, it still cannot be aired on TV. Kumar has now put the film online for free.

The exchanges with the Censor Board has made Kumar and others question both its role and its intentions. Many filmmakers feel that the censor board’s excessive and unnecessary interference has resulted in “pre-censorship” for filmmakers. Kumar told Index that, as a result, he feels like movies from this generation will not reflect today’s realities, and because of censorship “we are losing precious documentation of where we are as a civilisation.”

An online petition to Save Indie Cinema is challenging this status quo. The petition, which includes some of India’s most respected names in film, is trying to draw attention to the fact that indie cinema is being marginalised by both the government and distributors. They feel the government should budget for exhibition space for smaller movies, and even A-rated movies should be screened by the public broadcaster, albeit at a later time at night. The other complaint is that some of India’s biggest blockbusters, shown freely on both state and private channels, get “U” (universal) ratings by the Censor Board, despite containing violence and vulgarity. And distributors often relegate indie films to awkward showtimes, therefore sidelining them.

Perhaps as a response to this, the government has recently announced that  National Award winning films will be broadcast on Doordarshan, an Indian public broadcaster. They also added that they will consider screening them in commercial theaters.

For Kumar, this is a moment for cautious joy. “I hope this is true,” he wrote on Facebook about the news.

Mahima Kaul is a New Delhi based journalist. She tweets from @misskaul.

The post India: Kumar versus the censor appeared first on Index on Censorship.

This article was originally published on Open Democracy, as a part of a week-long series on the future digital freedom guest-edited by Index

Threats to digital freedom are growing just as the number of people accessing the internet is taking off, with millions more likely to join the digital world through mobiles and smartphones in the coming years.

The range of challenges is wide: from state censorship, including firewalls and the imposition of network or country-wide filters, to increasing numbers of takedown requests from governments, companies and individuals, corporate hoovering up of private data, growing surveillance of electronic communications, and criminalisation of speech on social media.

The rapid growth of threats to our digital freedom, in democracies as well as authoritarian regimes, means that the next few years could prove to be a watershed period determining whether the net remains a free space or not. Defending our freedom online means taking action now — beginning with understanding the nature of the threats and who lies behind them.

Governments send mixed messages
In democracies such as the US, UK, Sweden, India or Brazil, governments and politicians will often make stirring calls to defend digital freedom, emphasising that fundamental rights to freedom of expression and privacy apply online as much as off. But faced with temptations, such as the growing technological ease of mass population surveillance — from mobile phones to internet usage, web searches and social media chat — too many governments in democracies are starting to look at the sort of mass gathering of communications data that previously only authoritarian regimes would consider.

This leads to strange contradictions in government policy stances. In the UK, the government has temporarily withdrawn its proposed “snoopers’ charter” (the Communications Data Bill) in the face of swingeing criticism from an MPs’ scrutiny committee and from wider civil society. The Bill in its proposed form would have represented the most extensive mass surveillance of a population’s activities in the digital world of any democracy.

Yet at the same time, the UK along with the US, Germany and many other European countries has stood firm against attempts by China and the Russia, with some support from an array of other countries, to introduce top-down global control of the internet. Instead the UK government, along with many other (though not all) democracies, has argued for the current more “multistakeholder” model where no one body, country or group controls the net. The Indian government wobbled to a disturbing extent on this before refusing to go along with China and Russia at the major international telecoms summit in Dubai last December, in their push for this top down control.

Countries such as China and Iran have, unsurprisingly, been in the vanguard of those trying to build firewalls, block websites, and in myriad ways limit, control and monitor their population’s use of, and access to, the web. Yet the number of countries limiting the internet in some way has grown sharply in the last few years. Some of the limits introduced may seem unimportant, such as the Danish government having a country-wide internet block on their population accessing gaming sites in other countries (not for censorship reasons but to preserve the Danish monopoly on this profitable business). But the more the internet is filtered at network or country level, the less free it becomes.

There will always be arguments why a particular filter is necessary — to tackle child porn, to protect children and young adults from legal adult porn, to tackle crime and terrorism, to stop offence. Filtering and blocking sites always run the risk of over-blocking, of hiding not stopping a problem, and of being used for reasons beyond those stated.

Unless governments stand up for free speech, there can be segments of the public who demand limits on speech that undermine free expression as a fundamental right. One key example of this is the growing sensitivity of many people to offence. Yet there is no right not to be offended, and one person’s offence is another’s honest argument or piece of creative art. In the UK and India, we have recently seen arrests and prosecutions for supposedly offensive comments or photos and other postings on social media (in the case of these two countries relating to the common root of a 1930s English law that criminalised ‘grossly offensive’ phone, and then electronic, communications). There is now growing concern and debate about this criminalisation of mostly harmless social media comment. In the UK the director of public prosecutions Keir Starmer has issued interim guidelines in an attempt to rein in the growing number of such prosecutions.

Corporations as censors
Another disturbing part of this growing set of threats to our web freedom is the role played by corporations. Many web hosting companies and internet service providers state their support for fundamental rights, including free expression, while insisting that they also have to obey the laws of countries they are in. Google and Twitter have led the way in publishing transparency reports showing the number of takedown requests and user data information requests they have received from different governments.

But companies can become complicit in censorship if they take content down too readily in the face of public or government complaints — avoiding the risk of court cases or libel suits, playing safe. Companies such as Facebook or Twitter also set their own terms of service which define what is and is not acceptable usage and behaviour on their platforms. Perfectly normal perhaps — just like a club sets the rules of behaviour of its members.

But when the club, in the case of Facebook, is a billion strong, and its terms of service dictate what types of images and language are and are not acceptable, moreover dictating that anonymity is not allowed, then these are the sorts of constraints on free expression that are usually the preserve of governments to decide — governments that can be held accountable by their citizens (in democracies) and challenged by civil society, in the courts and through the ballot box.

The retention and commercial use of increasingly large amounts of individuals’ data from their internet activities has also sparked an extensive and vital debate about privacy. Privacy online is very often closely intertwined with free expression online: if someone is monitoring what you do or say or gathering it up and exploiting it commercially, that can be a major chill on free speech.

Whether and to what extent there should be a “right to be forgotten” is one part of this debate. Given the pervasive nature of the web, actually deleting individual data is becoming increasingly difficult. At the same time requests to delete individual data from news reports, for instance, is a sort of censorship of the historical record which would be highly undesirable.

Digital freedoms closing down

There are a wide and growing set of threats to our digital freedoms. But there are positive trends too. The rapid, intense and so far successful fight back against various forms of extensive imposition of copyright controls (ACTA, PIPA, SOPA and others) shows this is not a one-way street.

Even in regimes like Iran and China, many ordinary citizens have found ways to evade the censor, to widen their ability to communicate and access information. Governments can be challenged — at least in democracies — if they go down the route of mass surveillance or criminalisation of social media comment. Defending our digital freedom means becoming active, engaging with the arguments, making the case: bad decisions and laws can be stopped, limited or reversed. It is a national and an international debate — and the debate is now on.

The post Gathering clouds over digital freedom? appeared first on Index on Censorship.

As individuals in cities stock up on phones, laptops and tablets, accessing free wifi at more and more public places, the question of digital access in rural India still remains. Over the last decade, The National e-Governance Plan sought to bridge this gap by establishing a Common Service Center in each village. A CSC, as it is known, is a public-private partnership and operates as a one-stop hub for online government services (e-delivery) such as payment of certain utility bills, birth and death certificates, university exam results and such.

However, the overall experiment has revealed that the CSCs do not function equally. People do not need to use these government facilities more than once a month (if that), so unless the private entrepreneur is savvy enough to generate other income from the hub, it is not profitable to run. As well as this, irregular electricity supplies often restrict the timings of the CSC. And finally, while a public office with computers serves some purpose, it cannot substitute having personal connections in people’s homes.

This is why the government of India proposed a National Broadband Network, which will essentially lay out a fibre-optic cable across the country to achieve last mile connectivity. The idea behind this is simply that the network, like roads, will be provided by the government to then encourage private operations to start services those previously untouched areas. The government has committed about $4 billion to build the network that is projected to connect 250,000 village headquarters. One can only hope that it does not become mired in allegations of corruption, like so many other government projects in India.

— Of the 937.70 million telecom subscribers in India, 63.5 per cent are from urban areas

To understand India, you first need to look at some numbers. As of September 2012, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India revealed that in a country of 1.24 billion people, there are a total of 937.70 million telecom subscribers, including both wireless and wireline. Of these, 595.69 million or 63.5 per cent are from urban areas, while the rest, 342.01 million or 36.47 per cent are from the rural areas. The overall teledensity of the country is 77.04 per cent, with urban pockets at a whopping 161.13 per cent compared to 40.36 per cent in rural areas. Finally, the total number of internet subscribers in India (excluding those who use it on their mobile phones) is 24.01 million, a 5.97 per cent jump from the previous quarter. Some studies put mobile 3G subscriptions at 30 million, as of late 2011.

The figures reveal two important details. The first is that while there are many subscribers for telecom, that does not translate to each citizen owning a phone. In fact, the discrepancy between urban and rural teledensity, compounded by the very low broadband penetration in the country all point to the woefully inadequate job by both government and markets to connect much of rural India.

The solution to digital constraints in rural India has been one of hits and misses in the recent past. In terms of policy, India’s objectives have remained to some degree, quite ambitious. The 2012 Telecom Policy aims to take rural teledensity to 60 per cent by 2017 and one hundred per cent by 2020. The methods, however, are being changed as we speak.

In 2002, the government had constituted a Universal Service Obligation Fund, with the overall intention of encouraging private telecom operators to service remote and less lucrative markets. It did not work, as many service operations opted to pay a penalty instead of rolling out service in commercially unviable regions. For example, villages in India can often have only 500 residents, or be so poor that companies cannot even be guaranteed a minimum number of subscribers to justify their spending on infrastructure. At the same time, the high volume of mobile phones and internet subscriptions in the urban areas suggest that the market has successfully serviced cities, but is not incentivised enough to reach the deepest pockets of India.

While the government will be watched closely to see if it can deliver the network infrastructure it has promised to rural India on time, another facet of an inclusive digital development needs to be kept in mind. Right now, the internet in India serves populations who can read and write in some of the dominant languages including English, Hindi and some prominent state languages. However, as homes in smaller corners of the country get connected, everything from keyboards to content will have to cater to local dialects.

At the same time, outside of big e-commerce portals, projects that serve the smallest customer will be the only way the internet becomes relevant and constructive to rural India. Else, it will solely become a vehicle to youtube videos, Bollywood and cricket updates and let’s face it, porn.

When the final tabulation is done, it seems the government of India has understood all too well that leaving last mile of internet connectivity to commercial companies is not a viable strategy. Another reason they are taking up the challenge with a degree of renewed vigor is that they have pinned high hopes on their ability to deliver government services and crucial information in a more efficient manner through the net. To that end, the information highway needs to be established, so that the distance between the digital haves and digital have-nots does not increase any further.

The recent $1 million TED prize-winning education researcher Dr Sugata Mitra’s ground-breaking project, Hole in the Wall, demonstrates that all that is really needed to spur learning is access to information. In this case, Dr Mitra left an internet connected PC in a hole in a wall, and left to their own devices, slum children quickly learned how to use the computer and go online. Imagine the possibilities if they can grow up as digital natives.

The post Will new plans for a digital rural India hit or miss? appeared first on Index on Censorship.

While they exist harmoniously on paper, free expression and religion often conflict in practice, and free speech is often trampled in the name of protecting religious sensibilities — whether through self-censorship or legislation that censors.

History offers many examples of religious freedom being repressed too. Both free expression and religious freedom need protection from those who would meddle with them. And they are not necessarily incompatible.

Over 200 years ago, the United States’ founding fathers grouped together freedom of worship and freedom of speech. The US Constitution’s First Amendment, adopted in 1791, made sure that the Congress couldn’t pass laws establishing religions or prohibiting their free exercise, or abridging freedom of speech, press and assembly.

More recently, both religion and free expression were offered protection by The United Nations Declaration of Human Rights (UNDHR) drafted in 1949. It outlines the ways in which both free expression and religious freedom should be protected in Articles 18 and 19. Article 18 protects an individual’s right to “freedom of thought, conscience, and religion” and the freedom to change religion or beliefs. Article 19 states: “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”

Why is it, then, that for centuries — from the Spanish Inquisition to the Satanic Verses — free speech and religion have been cast as opponents? Index on Censorship has explored, and will continue to explore, this crucial question.

Offence

Muslims gathered in Malaysia’s capital to protest against the controversial Innocence of Muslims film (Demotix)

Sporadically explosive conflicts arrise when words or images offensive to believers spark a violent response, the most recent example being the reaction to the controversial Innocence of Muslims film. Index has stated before that the majority of states restrain by law distinct and direct incitements to violence; however, causing offence doesn’t constitute an incitement to violence, much less a good excuse to react with violence. Yet violent protests sparked by the YouTube film led many countries to push for the video to be taken down. As the controversy unfolded, digital platforms took centre stage in an age-old debate on where the line is drawn on free speech.

The kind of connectivity provided by the web means a video uploaded in California can lead to riots in Cairo. Real-time transmission, real-time unrest. It presents a serious challenge for hosts of user-generated content like YouTube and Facebook.

Before the web, British-Indian writer Salman Rushdie’s “blasphemous” 1988 novel — The Satanic Verses — sparked protests and earned its author a death sentence from Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini, who called upon Muslims to assassinate the novelist, his publishers, and anyone else associated with the book. The Japanese translator of the Satanic Verses was killed, and Rushdie’s Norwegian publisher was shot and wounded, leading some to think twice about publishing works potentially “offensive to Islam”.

These fears were renewed after the 2005 decision of Danish newspaper Jyllands Posten to publish caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad, which were protested about in riots worldwide, largely initiated as a result of agitation by Danish clerics.

The Jewel of Medina, a historical novel about the life of Muhammad’s wife Aisha was due to be published by Random House in the US in 2008, but it was pulled when an academic warned the publishers of a possible violent backlash to the novel. After the UK-based publisher Gibson Square decided to take on the novel, Islamic extremists attempted to firebomb the home of the company’s chief executive. More recently, ex-Muslim and author of The Young Atheist’s Handbook Alom Shaha wrote that initially, staff at Biteback publishing had reservations about releasing his book in the UK. Upon being presented with the book, one staff member’s reaction was, “we can’t publish this, we’ll get firebombed”.

Protecting religious sensitivities at price of free expression

Many countries have legislation designed to quell religious tensions and any ensuing violence.

India, for example, has a Penal Code with provisions to protect “religious feelings”, making “acts” or “words” that could disturb religious sensitivities punishable by law. However, while such laws exist to address prevent sectarian violence their vagueness means that they can also be used by groups to shut down free expression. This opens up a question, which is when do states have the right to censor for public order reasons even if the actual piece of writing, art or public display is not a direct incitement to violence.

Indian artist and Index award winner was forced to leave his native India in the 1990s after being threatened for his work

In the 1990s, Indian artist and Index award winner MF Husain was the subject of a violent intimidation campaign after painting Hindu gods and goddesses naked. He received death threats and had his work vandalised. Hundreds of complaints were brought against the artist, leading to his prosecution under sections 295 and 153A of India’s Penal Code, which outlaw insulting religions, as well as promoting animosity between religious groups. Locally these laws are justified as an effort to control sectarian violence. While the cases against Husain were eventually thrown out, the spectre of new legal battles combined with violent threats and harassment pushed Husain to flee his home country. He never returned, and died in exile last year.

Across the world restrictions on free expression are imposed using laws designed to protect religious sensitivities.

Pakistan’s blasphemy laws are notorious for being abused to silence and persecute the country’s religious minorities. Although the country’s Penal Code has always had a section on religious offence, clauses added in the 1980s set a high price for blasphemy or membership of the Ahmadi sect of Islam — an Islamic reformist movement. These laws, including a possible death sentence for insulting the Muslim prophet Muhammad, have been slammed by civil society inside and outside of Pakistan.

A report issued in September by the Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, Frank La Rue, says that blasphemy laws should be repealed. Controls on free speech in order to protect religious sensibility seem to run parallel to controls on religion.

Globally, restrictions on religious expression have increased according to a report released last month by the Pew Research Center. In 2010, the study found that 75 per cent of the world’s population lived in countries where restrictions placed on religious practice were rated as either “high” or “very high”. The study found that the greatest restrictions on religion take place in the world’s most heavily populated countries — India, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, and Russia stood out on the list.

Outrage and incitement to religious hatred

In 1977 Christian campaigner Mary Whitehouse successfully brought charges against the publishers of a magazine that printed a graphic sexual poem about Jesus Christ

In 2007, the UK introduced the offence of “incitement to religious hatred”, which some feared was merely a replacement for the scrapped blasphemy law, made more wide-ranging by covering not just Christianity but all religions. The last conviction under that law was the infamous 1977 Gay News case, where Christian campaigner Mary Whitehouse brought a successful private prosecution against the publishers of Gay News magazine for publishing a poem describing a Roman soldier’s fantasy of sex with Jesus Christ.

In the UK, one of the most pernicious means by which restrictions on free speech have grown tighter has been through the use of incitement laws, both incitement to hatred and incitement to violence and murder. In some cases, as in the outlawing of incitement to religious hatred through the Racial and Religious Hatred Act, the law is being used to censor genuine debate. In other cases, incitement law is being used to shut down protest, as in the convictions of Muslim protestors Mizanur Rahman and Umran Javed for inciting racial hatred and ‘soliciting murder’ during a rally in London against the publications of the Danish Muhammed cartoons. Over the past decade, the government has used the law both to expand the notion of ‘hatred’ and broaden the meaning of ‘incitement’. Much of what is deemed ‘hatred’ today is in fact the giving of offence. And should’t the giving of offence be viewed as a normal and acceptable part of plural society?

In 2009, Ireland created for the first time a specific blasphemy offence. This law states a person is guilty of blasphemy if

“he or she publishes or utters matter that is grossly abusive or insulting in relation to matters held sacred by any religion, thereby causing outrage among a substantial number of the adherents of that religion, and

(b) he or she intends, by the publication or utterance of the matter concerned, to cause such outrage.”

This wording was later used as a template for attempts to introduce the idea of “defamation of religion” as an offence at the United Nations. The attempt to introduce this concept failed, but the UN Human Rights Council did pass a resolution condemning “intolerance, negative stereotyping, stigmatisation, discrimination, incitement to violence, and violence against, persons based on religion or belief”.

On the other hand, according to Frank La Rue, quoted by Journalism & Intolerance said: “blasphemy is a horrible cultural phenomenon but, again, should not be censored or limited by criminal law. I would like to oppose blasphemy in general by being respectful, but that’s something you build in the culture and the traditions and the habits of the people, but not something you put in the criminal code. Then it becomes censorship.”

Crushing religious freedom

Other European countries have had their own free speech versus religion battle when a push towards bans on the veil or niqab began, infringing on choices of Muslim women. France’s controversial ban on the niqab went into effect last year. Offenders must pay a 150 € fine or take French citizenship classes. There have been similar discussions in the Netherlands, Denmark, the United Kingdom, and Belgium. Such bans are not restricted to Europe — in 2010 Syria banned face veils from university campuses. From 1998 – 2010, Turkey banned headscarves from university campuses. In fact, Turkey has a much wider ban on headscarves in public buildings, a ban the government faces difficulties overturning though it would like to. Just as troubling — countries like Iran and Saudi Arabia have strict dress codes for women that visitors must comply with as well.

Both enforced secularism and enforced religiosity constitute a form of censorship; the key word being “enforced” as opposed to “free”. Whether it is tackling enforced religion, religious offence, hatred and incitement to violence, or enforced secularism, only a constructive approach to free speech can genuinely guarantee freedom of conscience and belief, whether in one god, many or none.

Also read:

Kenan Malik on The Satanic Verses and free speech and Why free expression is now seen as an enemy of liberty

We need to talk about Islam says Alom Shaha

Salil Tripathi on how Pakistan’s deadly blasphemy laws have killed free speech

Michael Nugent on why Ireland’s 2009 blasphemy law is a backward step

The post Religion and free speech: it’s complicated appeared first on Index on Censorship.

Sites criticising an Indian business school have been blocked

The court did not inform affected parties of the block order. The founder of Kafila, Shivam Vij gave a statement to Firstpost on the matter saying that the move was “against the principle of natural justice. The court blocked the URL of my blog without giving me a chance to defend myself.”

Indian news agencies and think-tanks have been questioning the method and the necessity of such an order by the court, and whether or not it opened the door to censorship. Noting the value given to free speech by courts in democracies, experts at the Center for Internet and Society has expressed fears that “the court order has moved away from the settled principles of law while awarding an interim injunction for blocking of content related to IIPM”. The hurry in which the court ordered websites’ blocking is worrying, and even India’s government is planning to challenge the court order, as it involved one of its own sites (UGC).

The lack of transparency in this action also points to two facets of the fight for online freedom in India. The first is that internet service providers are the vehicle through which sites can be blocked when specific sites do not comply. In an interview with Firstpost, Chaudhuri claimed that Google had failed to comply with a previous court order to remove “defamatory” content about his business. The other is that despite the length to which Chaudhuri has gone to curb any criticism of his institution, in a wired world it is next to impossible. Hackers have not only crashed his website, but social media users have also slammed Chaudhuri’s move to censor the web, and #IIPM trended on Twitter for days following the incident. They have, in turn, been copying the blocked text of censored articles online.

In the meantime, it has now been revealed that IIPM is actually licensed under the Shops and Establishments Act, rather than the UGC. It will be tough to stop this information from going viral, but Chaudhuri can certainly try.

The post How India censored one of its own websites appeared first on Index on Censorship.

The news of Mohammed Afzal Guru’s death in a New Delhi prison on 9 February ignited fierce objection and protests in three areas of India administered Kashmir, surrounding claims the men accused had not been given a fair trial.  The Kashmiri man was from a village close to Watergam, and had been convicted of helping to plot an attack on the Indian parliament in 2001 that left 14 people dead. Police said an inquiry has been launched into Mushtaq’s shooting.

Chinese authorities said Elton John dedicating his Beijing concert to Ai Weiwei was “disrespectful”

China has tightened its restrictions on foreign singers performing in the country after Elton John dedicated his Beijing concert to Ai Weiwei in November. Chinese police questioned John after his Beijing performance last year, which he had dedicated “to the spirit and talent of Ai Weiwei”. Authorities then allegedly asked John to sign a statement saying that he had been inspired by Ai’s artistic achievements exclusively, rather than for his efforts to defend free speech. John was permitted to go ahead with his Guangzhou show in early December, but an editorial letter in the state-run Global Times said that the singer was “disrespectful” to include political sentiment in his performance, adding that authorities would think more carefully before inviting foreign artists to perform in future. Culture minister Cai Wu is now allegedly requesting degree certificates from international performers since John’s appearance, only allowing them entry into the country if they can prove they have been university-educated. Classical musicians have reportedly been required to submit proof of degrees when performing in the country since the start of the year.

A Hong Kong activist has been sentenced to nine months in prison on 7 February after burning a Chinese flag. Koo Sze-yiu was also discovered to have burned a Hong Kong flag, during two separate demonstrations against the government. In June 2012, Koo burned a Chinese flag outside the Liaison Office of the Central People’s Government, in protest against the staged suicide of Chinese activist Li Wangyang, and on 1 January he was seen waving a Chinese and Hong kong flag with holes in both. He was charged with four counts of flag desecration. The maximum punishment for flag desecration is three years in prison and a fine of 50,000 HK dollars (approximately £4,000). Shortly after his arrest, a Chinese netizen was arrested for posting a picture of a defaced flag on to a social networking site.

A UK journalist is fighting a court application submitted by the police requiring him to hand over video footage of the English Defence League (EDL), it was reported today (11 February). Jason Parkinson has refused to hand over his footage, saying that journalists are “not evidence gatherers for the police”. He fought a similar case in 2011, where police attempted to seize his footage of the Dale Farm eviction of travellers in Essex. Greater Manchester police applied for a production order hearing on 18 February to view all published and unpublished footage obtained during an EDL and counter protest march by Unite Against Fascism in Bolton 20 March 2010. The National Union of Journalists intends to contest the application. Parkinson said that handing over the evidence “could overturn the incredibly important victory for press freedom” that was achieved during the Dale Farm eviction.

In Bangalore, India an artist was forced to remove his pantings from an art gallery on 5 February because they depicted Hindu deities in the nude. Anirudh Sainath Krishnamani was told by police that they received a complaint from a member of Hindu nationalist political group the Bharatiya Janata Party, claiming the paintings ”hurt the sentiments of society”. Police threatened to shut down Krishnamani’s exhibition at Chitrakala Parishath gallery if he refused to remove the offending pieces, which police said were a potential law and order threat and could cause protests or an attack. The paintings removed included a picture of a nude goddess Kali as well as Shiva and Sati hugging each other. MN Krishnamani, Anirudh’s father and a senior supreme court advocate will contest the decision.

The post Index Index – International free speech round up – 11/02/13 appeared first on Index on Censorship.

However, despite being off of Facebook, the band’s identity is still being threatened online, as other pages pretending to be Pragaash have now appeared on the social networking site. Two of these were pages that previously existed on Facebook, but have very opportunistically changed their names from previous topics (such as cricket) to the name of the band. One is anti-India while the other anti-Pakistan. Any average user could be fooled into believing that this was indeed the band’s original Facebook page, and that these are their political views.

Meanwhile, three people have been arrested for posting abuse and threats on Pragaash’s own (now removed) Facebook page. They are in police custody until 15 February, and have also been charged under Section 66A of India’s Information Technology Act. The police have indicated that more arrests are on the way.

The Pragaash case yet again raises the question about the increasingly diminishing space for artists to perform their work without fear from any number of outraged and offended groups in India. Recently, an extremely popular actor from South India, Kamal Haasan, had to cut scenes from his latest movie due to major protests by Muslim groups. Around the same time, the Jaipur Literary Festival was mired in controversy when an academic’s remarks offended certain political groups, as Index reported.

In the case of Pragaash, while the guilty parties face arrest due to their abusive language online, there are reports that human rights groups are considering taking action against the offline portion of this controversy. Interestingly, they want to take Kashmir’s Grand Mufti to court for issuing fatwas that project the state of Jammu and Kashmir in a “bad light”.

Mahima Kaul is a New Delhi based journalist. She tweets from @misskaul.

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