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Ook in India komt het internet en de vrijheid van meningsuiting steeds meer onder vuur te liggen.

India debates limits to freedom of expression

By Simon Denyer, Published: February 12

NEW DELHI — From Google to Facebook, from world-famous author Salman Rushdie to a little-known political cartoonist, it has become increasingly easy in recent months to offend the Indian government, and to incur the wrath of the censor or even the threat of legal action.

In the world’s largest democracy, many Indians say freedom of expression is under attack, and along with it the values of pluralism and tolerance that have bound this nation of 1.2 billion people together since independence from Britain more than 64 years ago.

 India’s finance minister called for the country’s political parties to allow the nation to bring in major foreign retailers.

India’s democracy is nothing if not raucous. The huge array of newspapers and 24-hour television news channels are often vociferous in their criticism of politicians. But the media’s determination to root out corruption in the past two years has prompted a backlash. Talk of more stringent regulation is mounting.

At the same time, artists say their creative freedom has been steadily eroded. Even Jay Leno managed to offend Indian Sikhs — and prompt an official government complaint — with a satirical reference to their holiest shrine, the Golden Temple, in a joke about Mitt Romney’s vacation homes.

At fault, many say, is a thin-skinned government that gives in to the demands of violent mobs, ostensibly to make political gains but in fact to suppress its critics.

“For a country that takes great pride in its democracy and history of free speech, the present situation is troubling,” said Nilanjana Roy, a columnist and literary critic. “Especially in the creative sphere, the last two decades have been progressively intolerant.”

Targeting authors, artists

Rushdie, whose novel “The Satanic Verses” was banned in India in 1988, was forced to cancel appearances at the Jaipur Literature Festival last month after threats of violence from Muslim groups and a warning about a possible assassination attempt — information he said was probably fabricated by authorities to keep him away.

Wary of alienating Muslim voters in ongoing state elections, not a single Indian politician spoke out in favor of Rushdie’s right to be heard.

Last month, the screening of a documentary on Kashmir was canceled at a college in the city of Pune after right-wing Hindus objected, and an artist was beaten in his gallery in Delhi for showing nude paintings of actresses and models that his attackers claimed were an insult to the country.

The release of the latest book by Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasreen was canceled in Kolkata after Muslims protested, and Aseem Trivedi, a 25-year-old political cartoonist, was charged with treason and insulting India’s national emblems in drawings inspired by activist Anna Hazare’s anti-corruption movement.

But perhaps the most shocking episode for advocates of freedom of expression has been the government’s attempt to muzzle Facebook and Google — and prosecute the companies’ executives — for content posted on their sites deemed to be offensive. “Like China, we can block all such Web sites,” warned the judge hearing the case in the Delhi High Court.

The government cites images insulting to one or another of India’s religions, content it says could provoke unrest. It is up to social media sites, the government says, to manually screen and censor all potentially offensive content or face prosecution.