The Indian Government’s recently imposed ban on all Typepad and Blogspot blogs will soon be over and may already be over in some places. Earlier today, Rediff reported:
The blocking of blogs hosted by sites such as Blogspot, Typepad and Yahoo! Geocities by Internet Service Providers is likely to be lifted within 48 hours. [Link]
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p>In fact, both the government and the ISP umbrella group are claiming that they never planned a blanket ban in the first place, they just wanted to ban 17 blogs:
Amitabh Singhal, a spokesperson of the Internet Service Providers Association of India (ISPAI) … said … some ISPs — he insisted it wasn’t all — mistook the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) notice and blocked entire blog domains, adding that it was technically feasible to block a sub-domain and leave others still accessible. [Link]
According to an email sent to SAJA by the Deputy Counsul General in New York, the ban was imposed because:
A two-page write up containing extremely derogatory references to Islam and the holy prophet which had the potential to inflame religious sensitivities in India and create serious law and order problems in the country appeared in a blog facilitated by well-known search engines
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p>However, here’s the actual list of blogs that the government was trying to block. I’ve just skimmed them, but I can’t see the “two page write up” that they’re referring to [a copy of the original order is below the fold]:
- www.hinduunity.org
- mypetjawa.mu.nu [American right-wing blog]
- pajamaeditors.blogspot.com [American right-wing blog]
- exposingtheleft.blogspot.com [American right-wing blog]
- thepiratescove.us [American right-wing blog]
- commonfolkcommonsense.blogspot.com [This is isn’t even in English!]
- bamapachyderm.com [American right-wing blog]
- princesskimberley.blogspot.com [Long defunct]
- merrimusings.typepad.com [Defunct American right-wing blog, but now at http://www.merrimusings.mu.nu ]
- mackers-world.com [American right-wing blog]
- www.dalistan.org [They actually mean www.dalitstan.org which is currently down]
- www.hinduhumanrights.org/hindufocus.html
- www.nndh.com [Dead URL]
- bloodroyaltriped.com [Dead URL]
- imagesearchyahoo.com [Dead URL, but it wouldn’t be a blog!]
- www.imamali8.com [They probably mean imamali.com but somebody mistyped]
- www.rahulyadav.com [Computer geek at IU Bloomington – not a blog at all – banned merely for his links to the BJP, RSS, etc]
A few of the blogs mentioned do have some very offensive photos of the Koran, but that’s not the offense that the government was using to justify its ban. Seven of the seventeen blogs are right wing blogs that are strongly anti-Islamic in that LGF-clone way, but again, the government didn’t announce that it was trying to ban all blogs that were harshly critical of Islam. Most importantly, none of them are linked to recent terrorist attacks at all !
So even if you think that censorship should sometimes be imposed by the government, and you accept the government’s reasoning that this “two page write up” is one of those things that should be censored, you’d still be hard pressed to justify this ban.
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p>Technical aside – here’s why the ISPs may have accidentally banned many blogs when they intended to ban just a few:
Google’s Blogspot servers use IP multihoming, meaning a single IP address resolves to all blog subdomains hosted on Blogspot. Typepad may be similar. The ISPs blocked the IP address instead of filtering by subdomain or URL. [Link]
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p>And here’s the government order to the ISPs concerning which blogs to ban:
Update 1:
It seems that Rahul Yadav (#17 on the list) was banned not for having a blog, but merely for linking to the BJP and RSS. Here’s his response to my inquiry:
Hi, I have a pretty good idea as to why my site was blocked and its very ridiculous, in the links section I have links to various Hindu organizations and political parties back in India (VHP, RSS, BJP), none of which the current political party (Congress Party) is a fan of. BJP is their main rival and they were in power before this current government. BJP is a nationalistic political party which has been demanding better security against terrorism in India, which the Congress Party has yet to seriously respond to. When I found out about this it was pretty shocking, how can a government focus their time and efforts on a personal website with only links to its political opponents?
Update 2:
Here is an explanation from the American websites as to why they were banned. They think it has to do with the very offensive photoshopped photos of the Koran mentioned above:
Why did India ban this website? And what is the larger meaning of this action?
The short answer to the first question is that we offended Islamists and India is afraid of its own Muslim citizens. The short answer to the second question is that, sadly, it is increasingly becoming evident that liberty may not be able to exist wherever there is a large population of Muslims.
What, specifically, did we do to offend Islamists and their supporters in the Muslim world?
Some time ago a story began to be circulated in the mainstream press that a detainee’s Koran had been put in a toilet at Guantanamo Bay. It later turned out that the story was false.
Nevertheless, the reaction from many in the Muslim world was quite revealing about an alleged ‘tiny minority of extremists’. Riots erupted all over the world by people who were offended. Thousands marched, caused property damage, and some were even killed.
Over what? A story about a book being put in a toilet.
We can understand why someone might get offended over their holy book being mistreated. We might get offended if someone did the same to a Bible. But anyone who would engage in violence over such an action has a values system that is not only foreign to us, but also one which is not compatible with liberty.
This reaction, along with the later reaction of many Muslims over cartoons depicting Mohammed, was a clarifying moment for us.
Islam, as understood by many Muslims, is not a tolerant religion.
The very definition of tolerance is to allow that which we do not agree with. The moment Muslims demand that their governments punish those who say, write, or depict things that they find offensive, they reveal their intolerance.
Many people in my experience are intolerant. Intolerance is not a very unique attribute. It is intolerance coupled with threats of violence that makes many Muslims unique in the world. It is also what makes Islam uniquely dangerous among the major religions of the world.
Not only do these intolerant Muslims wish for offensive speech to stop, but they threaten violence upon any government unwilling to censor.
So, our reaction to the overreaction in the Muslim world was to make fun of them by making fun of the Koran flushing story. Oddly, making fun of intolerant people is now considered a form of intolerance by many in the world. [Link]
I am glad that we at SM are a highly secretive oligarchy (and not a U.N. recognized democratically elected entity) that can ban and delete this sort of sentiment at will without protestation from the larger blogosphere 🙂
So the Indian government is against right wingers in the US now? Looking at the asinine content on some of these blogs (A succint summation of mypetjawa’s logic is – Let’s dunk the Koran in a commode and insult all Muslims because so many of them rioted over cartoons? WTF!) So while I wouldn’t consider that such a VERY bad thing, this whole business of blocking URLS goes to show how incompetent and ingorant beaureaucrats are in India. Ignoring for the moment the fact that censoring is undemocratic and wrong, did they not realise just blocking a few URLs is totally pointless and can by bypassed in about 1000 different ways. Must we lag behind China in the application of technology even to do evil? Where is the grand firewall of India I say…if you must opress us, at least give us a non-trivial challenge :p
Here’s how this happened. Some time last year a big minster sahib decided to investigate this Intarnet thingy one day, got hot and bothered about some of the content that he found, then spent the next 3 days making a mis-spelt list of the sites he didn’t like. As these things tend to do, this list slowly found its way from one desk to another to the people who could actually enforce this over the course of a few months by which time half the URls were dead. Like the time they blocked yahoogroups last year, this only helped popularise the blogs across international media and now they are celebrating their new found fame.
What bugs me is fact that the order to ban sites had clear typos in it, and included some non-sensical blogs. If you’re going to be evil and crack down on free speech, at least do it right!
You should be doubly glad — if you were a “U.N. recognized democratically elected entity,” I’d be watching out for invasions and airstrikes right about now.
It’s over! It’s over! It’s over!
Atleast in Bangalore on BSNL…
Bangalore Bytes – can you currently see the formerly banned blogs? That was fast – I thought it would take until Friday at least …
I just hope that these un-banned sites all now accuse the Indian government of being “pseudo-secular” (or pseudo-insert-word-here) and that all the right wing nut-jobs attack them instead of spending time on our threads.
Spoor Lam was right! Spoor Lam is Cassandra!
i think amerika can breathe a sigh of relief over our anxeity about possible indian ascedency….
Someone back in the motherland should print this out – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_firewall_of_China and send it to Mr. Haridhasapavalan at the address on the document. Don’t forget to inscribe (F – Needs better effort. Try harder next time) in red ink on top.
Did you notice that the letter simply said “It has been decided to block the following……and report compliance”. There was no explanation given, just a fucking order. WTF, is India now an Orwellian territory. And in this day and age of internet, sattelite & cable TV why the hell do we need an Information & Broadcasting Ministry??? What do these guys do anyway???? Fucking dumbfucks.
Sorry for the rant & foul language but if this is the way the country continues to be governed forget about being a “superpower”.
Moderator:
It is not true that they are not linked to terrorism. Please do a search at Dalitstan.org on Mughalstan.
MAJOR EXTREMIST Muslims. Site is down, so go to google, do a search on the domain and mughalstan, view the CACHED files….
VERY OFFENSIVE to non Muslims, and call for a Muslim nation.
Kinda irrelevant, but it looks like Japanese, actually…
From what I remember from reading dalitstan.org, it was mainly anti-caste Hindu stuff, including some [really poor] Brahmin jokes. I don’t remember them advocating violence, etc. Maybe I’m wrong, and it’s also been a while since I looked at it.
I am going to be a bit of a contrarian here…
Most of the terrorist activities in present day India are the consequence of such right-wing pro-zionist hate mongering by right wing nutjobs resultng in the alienation and ghettoization of the muslim minority. I think the government’s reasoning behind connecting the ban, to protect against terrorism, is absolutely correct, if anything the ban is too incomplete and easy to circumvent. It’s easy for Americans to chide India on the ban, but they need to keep in mind these bans probably save lives by preventing riots and terrorism and by stopping recruitment by fanatics (both hindu and muslim).
Note: Obviously blocking all of blogger and typepad was a dumb mistake on part of the ISPs, I am talking about these specific fascist sites.
Varun-you are a supreme idiot
I dont think people who read blogs have time to go for killing and participate in riots . At least in india penetration of internet is very low. Most people use internet for things other than reading blogs . And if someone want to go for riot , he/she dont need to read blogs . there is enough material anywhere in india.
Doing deabte and writing anti-XXX material is one thing and going for looting and killing is another .
(giggle) You’re kidding, right?
So far, I have yet to hear any reports of terrorists inspired by “right wing nutjobs” on blogs. Have you? Be serious. Bans don’t save lives; it’s submission to extremism, which only fosters a breeding ground for more violence by extremists because apparently, IT WORKS.
If your opponent is quick to anger, seek to irritate him. –Sun Tzu
/the “Zionist Crusader” 😉
Excuse my ignorance, but what is the LGF? Is it a political party?
Should I wait for the people I know whose names, contact information, and, in some cases, pictures, are provided at “Hindu Unity’s CRIMINALS HIT LIST !” to be harassed, attacked, or killed before I start thinking about whether it’s appropriate to maintain a hitlist of political enemies on the web? This is a serious topic, yo.
15 · Varun on July 20, 2006 04:02 AM · Direct link I am going to be a bit of a contrarian here…
Most of the terrorist activities in present day India are the consequence of such right-wing pro-zionist hate mongering by right wing nutjobs resultng in the alienation and ghettoization of the muslim minority. I think the government’s reasoning behind connecting the ban, to protect against terrorism, is absolutely correct, if anything the ban is too incomplete and easy to circumvent. It’s easy for Americans to chide India on the ban, but they need to keep in mind these bans probably save lives by preventing riots and terrorism and by stopping recruitment by fanatics (both hindu and muslim).
I disagree. This will just galvanize hardliners into creating a larger and less blockable presence on the net. BTW most of these sites (dalitsan, hinduunity) are based in the US or in the UK (hindu human rights).
Saurav, It’s weird, they have Amitava Kumar, Vijay Prashad, and Biju Mathew on that list too. Wow! (Only a matter of time before my name is added, I hope.)
At some point you have to make a judgment about whether you think these guys are a couple of nutjobs in a basement somewhere, or actually connected to a political system that would act on its “recommendations.” In my view the best answer to these nuts is the SpoorLam answer of parody, not censorship.
And Sriram, LGF = Little Green Footballs. A blog that is politely called a “conservative American nationalist stronghold.” Less politely, a “bunch of wingnuts.”
Saurav, It’s weird, they have Amitava Kumar, Vijay Prashad, and Biju Mathew on that list too. Wow! (Only a matter of time before my name is added, I hope.)
BTW Amitava Kumar devoted the first chapter of his book “Husband of a Fanatic” to an interview with the guy who runs hinduunity.org. I believe he was placed on the “hitlist” after he married a Muslim woman and wrote an article about it in MSM. Its actually very funny in places.
And the Pope, Sonia Gandhi, Pat Robertson, Benny Hinn, Dawood Ibrahim, Shahrukh Khan, and my favorite “Arun Ghandhi – Grandson of the “Mahatma” Ghandhi” [It’s not only Americans who mis-spell Gandhi it seems]
That’s just the “hitlist” then there is a whole section on anti-Hindu commies who don’t make it on to the hitlist.
Honestly, the whole thing reads like some teenager’s myspace/livejournal list of “People who suck”
Here is an excerpt on hinduunity’s founder from Amitava Kumar’s book.
Let’s be serious people. Our people have a tendency to shoot themselves in the foot constantly. I have to wonder what kind of democracy is so scared of a minority that it suppresses speech, has a different civil code, and does nothing to punish Pakistan for its complicity in attacking Indians.
The reason is that an Indian’s life is cheap to the elites. Why rock the boat when you can make a killing on flats in Guargon. Does anyone here think China would be so passive if Shangai were attacked by the Taiwanese?
I can’t wait to hear the self-proclaimed post-colonial post-post-modern intelligensia of SP when they come out of the woodwork. There are subtler issuers they will say. What issue can be more subtle than the lives of your people? Their ability to read word the government finds offensive.
Who are SP?
saurav, that link is an eye-opener. desitude, thanks for the link to amitava’s piece.
damn!
You\’re right comrade. Then, maybe we can celebrate by running tanks over student demonstrations in Tianenmen Square. Vive la revolucion, &c.
Vikram, just because you asked. I think Gurgaon real estate is terribly inflated in the presence of insufficient infrastructure. So, er, you can no longer make a killing there.
now back to our regularly scheduled commenting-shommenting
Whoah… Sun Tzu was a master of comment aikido?
Rogue Mutineer Manish,
Deliberately provoking your opponent into anger (if you think such a tactic is ethical) clouds their mental judgement and lessens their emotional self-control, which causes them to a) make mistakes and b) enables you to use this against them as a weakness, as your own thinking will be clearer and sharper.
Yeah man, you shoulda seen him on alt.culture.us-asian-chinese back in the day. He put Steven Segal to shame 😉
That hitlist is hilarious.
And that thing you do with your hands? Very baaaad.
The ban is not over yet btw. Still blocked on the Airtel backbone, which my ISP uses.
… in his famous book, The Art of Spoor.
well all this banning the url saga smells of nothing else but politics … a guy gets his site banned coz he has links to political parties and organizations which are in opposition of the current government .. american blogs are banned becoz they hurt the sentiment of muslims … thats not a bad thing but let every1 speak .. m sure there mus be blogs by right wing muslims and right wing hindus too … as i concurr, its nothing but printing this letter in the press, makin the muslims think that the govt stood up for them and in the process gaining their sympathy and converting them to a votebank (it already exists but why not add some new 1s) .. the events occuring lately (the reservations galore) are nothing but gaining the votes of the muslims and the backward castes .. after all, its them who decide who wins the elections .. not the upper castes and other minorities …
It’s a beautiful thing called minorityism. Obviously, nothing new in India. Vast majority of the sites blocked spoke against Islam.
I knew India could never pull a China. The Indian people are simply too accustomed to democracy, there’s no way blocking blogs would actually happen.
This was a stupid strategy, but at least one of the sites on that list is truely vile – Dalitstan – the biggest piece of nationalistic Christian fundamentalist backed racism that I have ever encountered. Still, I would not have banned it, violating Indian rights, and brought attention to it.
Ah, the delightful Mr Barotia. We meet again.
(It really is a delightfully written piece). Siddhartha, my copy of Husband of a Fanatic recently came in, so if you’d like to have a look, you know where to find me.
I’m in the Middle East and the Hindu Unity wesite has been blocked by my ISP; could someone mail me that list please? Thanks
In a sense you’re right, but there were plenty of people who responded to this ban initially along the lines of “the government must have good reason! why are you guys getting so worked up about a few blogs? And anyway, why don’t you switch to Rediffblogs?”
In fact, the reason they were forced to address this quickly is that amongst the few thousand Indian bloggers out there are a few dozen professional journalists, who have the ability to reach millions of people around the world through their work. The outrage in the blogosphere was a story that these journalists could cover. As a result, lots of people were also writing and calling into CERT; even the Indian consulate in New York was forced to issue a statement. The government was feeling the heat, and made sure the ISPs corrected the ban.
India could have “pulled a China,” but only if people refused to get outraged when the government restricted their freedom. Our outrage keeps Indian democracy alive.
Quite often the Indian government takes action to appease the hindu politicians – BJP, RSS, Shiv Sena – (& sometimes people as well). This is one of those actions, a nakab for immediate action which can never be taken against a group of unidentified people – terrorists. The banning of such blogs is an action taken entirely to appease such opposition parties. The consequences of such an action is minimal if not inconsequential; however, the action taken is just a “look what we did after Mumbai bombings” when being attacked at the next election by the opposition parties.
The sad thing is that the people will buy into such blog-banning as “proper reactionary” measure taken after Mumbai bombings. This in the case of politics means the idea will “trickle up” to the politicians as Indian politicians tend listen more to the massive uneducated aggrarian population (which more often than not feature individuals of strong religious convictions and severe knee jerk reactions) than to the educated individuals of society…i could say more but its rather futile the discussion of indian political machinery.
Furthermore, it is not even this that plagues India. It is the idea of superirority and inferirority. As long as RSS thinks they are more firm-hearted than Jamait-e-Islami and vice versa problems will continue to rise. As long as bus loads of Gujurati pilgrims get off at Muslim dominated areas in Kashmir and chant Hindu slogans, as long as Muslim neighborhoods refuse to pay electricity bills, as long as everyone thinks they are somehow more superior to the person next door.
Surely Pakistan is the perfect ground for such terrorist but it has been that way for the past two decades, thanks to the cold war. Currently Pakistan has nothing under its control Balochistan is under revolt, NWFP has severe Taleban participation in Waziristan, Azad Kashmir is destroyed literally – nothing exists in Azad Kashmir now, and Sindh & Punjab are all that Pakistan has under control. In Bangladesh – the country thats on the Top 5 of the most CORRUPT contries in the world – the government is struggling to hold itself together let alone the thriving militant Islam rise in its people. Both of these countries can be pointed to for their faults; however, neither will admit their fault as the government in both cases is entirely disconnected from its population.
India should fix its problems and reduce the cause for such violence, in this case Narendra Modi. Why is he still functioning as a political leader? Why does he get to make a speech after the Mumbai bombings? Is he the right person to do so?
That’s the same thing I’m hearing Munish as my site continues to be inaccesable through normal means.
It has some people’s photos and addresses and is called a “hit list”! I mean, a lot of the things that crazy Hindutva people (as opposed to the socially adjusted ones, whom I’ve actually conversed with) sound like some teenager’s myspace/livejournal list. That doesn’t mean it’s not potentially dangerous.
In any case, I wasn’t advocating banning the site–I don’t know exactly what to make of it or how best to address the issue of borderline incitement to violence against specific people and free speech. I just wanted to let Beth know that this issue goes beyond the effects on idiot American bloggers.
And on a post-script, Amardeep, I agree–it’s something of a mark of pride (as long as you’re not David Duke) to make it to a list like that 🙂
I’m glad they came to their senses. I remember coming across really gruesome and hate-filled websites run by Kashmiri and Khalistan independence partisans back in the early days of the web…and I’ve seen a fair amount of Sangh rubbish too (not the jehadi stuff yet but I’m sure there’s tons of it) – I wouldn’t dream of trying to ban or block them because banning websites does squat to stop people thinking the way they do, and it’s so much better to have that rhetoric out there for everyone to see and be repelled by. Can’t believe that people still think censorship achieves anything in this day and age. And shame on the Congress for thinking it’s still 1976.
It would be a strange kind of democracy indeed that had to depend on the outrage of people outside the country to stay alive 🙂
Banning right-wing blogs is almost not censorship. Almost.
It would be a strange kind of democracy indeed that had to depend on the outrage of people outside the country to stay alive 🙂
Saurav,
You are a typical Desi snob. What made you think that Indian govt was responding to the people outside the country. Indian bloggers and Indian Media are responsible for this.
I wish my blog was banned. I could use the publicity.
Ennis – I don’t see what context SP was used in, but normally refers to the Samajwadi Party.
If y’all are not familiar with this India media affairs/policy/commentary/law website yet, you must read it. http://www.thehoot.org