Take down or keep on: Blogger dilemmas

IN Censorship | 15/07/2013

In the last week, two disparate blog posts drew swift and censorious reactions from their subjects. Both reactions raise disturbing questions about the nature of debate and the freedom to express one’s opinion in an online medium without fear, favour and imprisonment.

In the first instance, a blogger Saumyadipta Banerjee, presented this startling message titled ‘Mr Salman Khan’ on his popular blog bollywoodjournalist.com :

 The last two days have been really excruciating for me. I have received a communication from Mr Salman Khan. There I have been instructed to remove two blog posts that I have written about him. Those articles have been removed from this blog. Here’s a public apology to Mr Salman Khan for writing two blog posts that he didn’t consider appropriate. I am taking a break from writing on this blog till I am in a proper frame of mind to write again. I am really sorry.

The actor’s ire was reportedly ignited by a post which details the case of drunk driving and the woeful plight and subsequent death of the prime witness, a constable who was deployed for Khan’s security and testified that he was drunk when at the wheel. Banerjee took down his post but as things happen on the ‘net, it was quickly saved and a cache created, which can be viewed here.

So Khan now has his hands full dealing with a number of sites posting the orginal offending item. Surely, he would wonder why he didn’t ignore the original post in the first place!

In the second instance, the very stimulating and throught-provoking site from the North East, The Thumbprint, carried an article entitled ‘NRHM woes’ by Megha Kashyap, a young social activist who reported on the tragic death of a baby because the mother was unable to get timely access to health care. The report provided details of how the mother was unable to get an ambulance and had to travel on very bad roads in a Gypsy belonging to environmentalist and filmmaker Gautam Saikia. The woman went into labour en route to the nearest health centre but there were complications with the delivery and the baby did not make it.

The story drew a lot of reactions from Thumbprint readers, including ‘official’ sources – officers who worked in different levels of the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) in Assam. The immediate official response was to disbelieve the account, going on to accuse the writer of sensationalizing the incident and violating her privacy by taking photographs or shooting a video of her plight. An official even threatened action against the writer.

However, the ‘official’ response was literally drowned by comments from other readers, who narrated their own accounts of the failure of the health system. The barrage of comments and the discussion that continued on television channels resulted in a change in the official response with government officials backing down to acknowledge in a more conciliatory tone that there were problems with the health delivery system.

Take down or keep it

Both posts were accurate accounts of a reality; both were accurate accounts and a narration of facts.  In fact, the information in the blog about Salman Khan was not new but already in the public domain. The news of the actor’s drunk driving and the death of the workers of the bakery, the eye witness account of the constable which was clinching evidence of the actor’s intoxicated state while at the wheel, the subsequent death of the constable  - all of this had been extensively covered in newspapers.

So, why was this blog taken down? One can only hazard a guess at the immense intimidatory tactics and pressure the writer would have been subject to. Were the ‘instructions’ the writer received part of any legal process to take down objectionable content under the infamous Information Technology Act, 2000? If so, we’ll never even know if they would they stand scrutiny by a court?

In the other instance, the ‘objectors’ had to back down! Public pressure and a firm stand by the writer and the editor of the site, convinced of the veracity of the writer’s account, helped keep the content online.

And perhaps the bottom line is that a government health department can hardly be as intimidating as a wealthy Bollywood star.