Freedom to Speech Cartoon

Freedom Of Speech

 A  21 years old Mumbai Girl(Shaheen Dhada) and her friend (Renu Srinivasan)was held by cops for Facebook status update expressing her view against Bandh after Balasaheb’s death and her friend arrested for liking her status. Reportedly,one of local Sena leaders filed a complaint claiming this statement of the girl as ‘hurting religious sentiment’!

Shiv Sena supporters thereafter vandalized the clinic of the girl’s uncle.The girls were later released on bail of Rs 15000 each.The incident brought immense criticisms for the Sena and the police but both girls and their family have apologized for the incident,n the contrary.

Freedom of Speech’ which is a right of every Indian, is probably only for the hardliner political leaders who can readily ‘threaten to throw out people from different states of India or following different religion’ and not for the common people !

Political Leaders and their family members or their party workers take it too personal when a common man voices out his/her opinion which might criticize the leader or his/her family ! They punish commoners for being commoners, for daring to utilize the power of ‘freedom of speech’ by voicing out their opinion ! Come on ‘Mango People’, the ‘Aam Admi’ , by now you must understand ‘Freedom of Speech’ requires you to get an ‘Anticipatory Bail’ along with if you dare to speak against any leader. It was your fault you made a leader and he/she hates criticisms!  🙁

Freedom Of Speech Image,
freedom of speech only for leaders !

India versus Internet.Filter contents or face ban

Petitioner, Vinay Rai believes this is in public interest and he has filed this complaint as  ‘affected person’ who believes in a ‘secular India’. Vinay considers the content on sites like Google,Facebook , Twitter and other such sites , including blogging sites contain unfiltered materials which are dangerous for the community and peace and harmony of the nation. He does not want the sites to be banned in India but contents should be filtered by the networking sites and search engines before going public, in India.

It might be a coincidence that he raised his voice against these sites almost around the time when the Congress Minister, Kapil Sibal declared his discontent with such sites.

Well, his complaint was slightly different from his views of filtration of content. He has accused the issue as a conspiracy between authors and the respondents to defame India with  clear intentions to spread communal violence in the country.

Delhi High Courts decision might have contented him temporarily by asking these sites to filter contents in the interest of country else face ban like in China.

Point is, today, World is considered a Global – Village and indeed it is. Just by removing contents considered objectionable in the interest of a country can it be guaranteed the contents wont create their impact when they would be freely shown in other parts of world. Do Indians live only in India. Given such circumstances, an Indian staying in Europe may get to see such content and may call up back in India, and discuss the same stuff with his friends and family and that may spread anyways. In such situation people would just follow others version of story and may react more badly. Isn’t that possible?

Since the internet has become prominent source of communication and expression , in India and the world, users have witnessed unlimited content which hurt religious and patriotic sentiments and most of them do not retaliate as they are literate enough to understand  offender’s spineless frustration which might have forced him to talk or draw contents against a religion or country. The ones who might feel offended have the liberty to contradict, question and react. Nobody stops anyone. It is fair. How many times in India riots have taken place due to contents on the internet?

By banning sites or even by filtering contents are we not taking away an opportunity of discussion, an opportunity of debate, an opportunity of correcting and above all “freedom to speech and express” ?

Is this ban not a way of saying ‘ None speaks against me.’ Is it democracy and secular thought process or dictatorship , inside the couch of ‘being offended’?

A few group of hardliners can stop someone to speak out as it happened in case of Rushdie. Point is did his expression in his book inspire someone to change his faith and if it all it did so , he never deserved to be in the clan, good for the followers of faith that a hypocrite is gone.

It is not the content on the internet but our conscious mind which filters what to react on and how and that is how it has been happening since internet has become public.  And anyways, if a content  is strong enough to shake religious or patriotic faith then such faith in religion or nationality itself was fake. Do we  have ‘only’ admirers in our surrounding? The answer is NO  and even after knowing someone does not like us or our views or dressing, we do not go ahead and attack him. We carry on without even explaining, in most of the cases.

Moreover, if a nation has to take a decision on banning on internet or its content, it has to be put for voting, the way we elect our Government. Let the majority decide what they prefer.