G B Shaw once said, "Assassination
is extreme form of censorship". Shaw lived in early half of twentieth
century. His words quite clearly show censorship imposed by rulers of his time,
which makes us understand that Censorship is nothing new to us. In general, Censorship
involves suppression of speech or public communication, which raises
issues of Freedom of Speech, otherwise constitutionally protected
by Article 19-(1) of Indian Constitution. The same Article in next clause,
however, has scope of imposing reasonable restrictions in the interests
of sovereignty and integrity of India. The restriction may be
extended to envisage objectionable contents which include anything that "threatens
the unity. integrity, defence, security or sovereignty of India,
friendly relations with foreign states or public order". Prior
to implementation of Information Technology Rules 2011, in
terms of Press Freedom Index India's ranking has dipped to 131
from 80 in just 11 years. This was surfaced by the analysts of Reports
Without Borders in their Press Freedom Ratings. In yet another
report, Freedom in the World, by a US based NGO that conducts
research and advocacy on democracy, political freedom and human
rights, Freedom House, India has managed to score 3 on a scale
of 1 (most free) to 7 (least free) earning designation of free.
 |
| Reporters Without Borders-2009 Press Freedom Rankings |
While much has been talked about
Censorship earlier as well, Internet Censorship is making much more news.
Internet censorship in India really picked up from the point of time Kargil
War in 1999 when a Pakistan based daily newspaper Dawn was
blocked from access within India by Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited -
VSNL, a government owned telecommunication company which
had monopoly at that time in international internet gateways in
India. During Kargil war and thereafter Internet censorship
gained momentum.
The parliament passed the IT Act in 2000, under which a body called Computer Emergency Response Team - CERT-In whose job is to safeguard India's cyber-security. CERT-In became operational in 2003 and its first stint with censorship came within two months. Acting on CERT-In recommendations government asked all ISP's to block Yahoo! Groups webpage linked to Kashi militant group called Hynniewtrep National Liberation Council. The difficulty led to all Yahoo! Groups to be banned for almost two weeks. While government sources termed the group to be illegal and separatist many sources clam that it was not even separatist outfit, only one wanting to turn Meghaliya into Kashi state, but had ties with Naga separatists. The censor ship episode was repeated in July 2006 when the Indian government ordered the blocking of 17 websites, including some hosted on the Geocities, Blogspot and Typepad domains. An RTI application revealed that this had been done by a Gazette notification which gave government powers to block sites. From 2007 onwards, several cases of India asking social-networking sites Orkut to take down the defamatory pages regarding various political figures. Meanwhile the blocking of websites by Indian government continued surreptitiously, as government doesn't publish its orders to block websites. In 2009, a very popular cartoon porn website SavitaBhabi.com was blocked, thus going beyond the matter concerned to national security giving a clear message to come hard on pornography as well, which is illegal in India. With new IT Rules coming last year, and increasing volume of websites being blocked or filtered, it is quite apprehensive that censorship might many a times hide truth and subdue many voices which are already unheard to masses, as has been seen happened in other forms of media. People in recent past during the emergency rule have seen censorship of press being imposed. In 2003 Indian Censor Board banned the film 'Gulabi Aaina' a movie on transsexuals citing it 'vulgar and offensive' . The film-maker appealed twice unsuccessfully and film still remains banned in India. Ironically, Ashvin Kumar's film Inshallah Football which was deemed unfit for consumption last year by Censor Board has won National Award for Best film on Social Issues. Kumar has won Oscar nomination for his short film Little Terrorist. A similar brilliant work that faced the wrath of censorship was Eve Ensler's drama The Vagina Monologues, Many similar instances where brilliant work of various artists, film-makers, writers has been either banned or edited, which is really a matter of grave concern. The line demarcating necessary censorship and distinguishing it from the unnecessary and avoidable is so blur that one is sometimes hardly able to conclude if anything wrong has happened. While in 1999 the censorship during Kargil War received criticism from various corners but it helped India achieving diplomatic gains, but banning films like Bandit Queen or Gulabi Aaina or Ensler's drama in the name of moral policing is quite unnecessary. Banning book like The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushide or Bhavsagar Granth should not be compared with ban on The Polyester Prince biography of an Indian businessman Dhirubhai Ambani. While sometimes banning or censoring becomes necessary to maintain communal harmony and national security but it simply acts like even a double edged sword which kills truth as well. A solution to this problem is not much difficult just if those who issue orders of censoring or ban take decisions more pragmatically. The decision to ban cartoon porn website SavitaBhabi.com is naive when people have excess to real porn websites. Ban on magazines like Playboy becomes ineffective when its digital version is easily available. The ban on distribution and screening of X-rated films becomes irrelevant when such content is easily available in market and even to minors. In such cases where ban eventually becomes ineffective continuing ban becomes unnecessary. The only thing that we earn of such bans is a designation of being conservative nation and increase in crime rate. Piracy which in India is on high and is increasing is because of one of such bans. Hence more effective procedure to distinguish necessary and unnecessary censorship needs to be developed so that work of brilliant minds, voices of suppressed and public option is not getting subdued. |
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