India Blocks Blogs in Wake of Mumbai Bombings
By SOMINI SENGUPTA
Published: July 18, 2006
NEW DELHI, July 18 — As India’s financial capital, Mumbai, observed a moment of silence today to commemorate the serial bombings of its commuter trains seven days ago, a blistering silence blanketed the Indian blogosphere.
For reasons yet unexplained by the authorities, the Indian government has apparently directed local Internet service providers to block access to a handful of outlets that host blogs, including the popular blogspot.com. Indian bloggers have reacted with anger and confusion, accusing the government of censorship and demanding to know why their sites have been jammed.
Nilanjana Roy, a Delhi-based writer who runs kitabkhana.blogspot.com, a literary blog, called the seeming censorship “a dangerous precedent.”
“You have a right to know what is being banned, and why it’s being banned,” she said. “I can understand if it’s China or Iran or Saudi Arabia. I’m truly appalled when it’s my country doing this.”
The ban, in theory, meant that people living in India were kept from reading anything that appeared on the blocked outlets — whether Indian blogs or otherwise. But the ban seemed far from effective. While some Internet service providers blocked access, others did not.
Many more blog afficionados simply go around the blockade by figuring out how to read their favorite sites. One Web site offered help by way of a free blog “gateway.”
“Is your blog blocked in India, Pakistan, Iran or China?” the site asked, and went on to offer instructions for outwitting the surprising shutdown.
That site was prompted by the efforts of the Pakistan Telecom Authority to block blogspot.com last February, as they attempted to prevent the proliferation of Danish cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammad. Their publication had fueled violent protests across Pakistan.
Last Thursday, a technician at a Bangalore-based service center of one Internet provider said the government had ordered the block of blogspot.com “due to security reasons.” Another service provider in New Delhi said the government, without explanation, had directed his company to block access to a list of less than a dozen Web sites. He could offer no details about the sites.
Officials at the Ministry of Communications here did not return repeated calls. An official at the ministry’s department of information and technology, Gulshan Rai, said he was aware of “two pages” that had been blocked for spreading what he called “antinational sentiments,” but was unable to provide details.
The secretary for telecommunications, D. S. Mathur, that bureau’s highest-ranking civil servant, hung up the phone when reached at home.The minister of communications, Dayanidhi Maran, was traveling in San Francisco and unavailable for comment.
If nothing else, the tempest over the restricted sites is a testament to growing government anxiety about how to control this new and mushrooming medium.
Like blogs anywhere else, Indian blogs serve as forums to pontificate on every conceivable subject: books, movies, politics, cricket. There are blogs devoted to everyday self-indulgence: one blogger, a self-described amateur photographer, writes of jogging in the monsoon, while another recalls what she wore to a cocktail party.
There are blogs, too, that strive to be public service tools, including one that within hours of the Mumbai train blasts began listing phone numbers of hospitals where victims were being taken; called mumbaihelp.blogspot.com, it is among those blocked.
Last Tuesday’s attacks on the Mumbai trains left a death toll of 182 and injured more than 700. A week later, frenetic Mumbai observed a short silence today in memory of the victims.
It is impossible to know how many Indian blogs are affected by the blocking measure. One blogger, Mitesh Vasa, from Vienna, Virginia, has documented “40,128 Indian bloggers who mention India as their country.” That does not include those who do not name on their site which country they are based in, nor others who identify their country of origin, as Peter Griffin does from Mumbai, as “utopia.”
Mr. Griffin, who helped set up the mumbaihelp site, said he woke up this morning to a furious litany of 300 e-mails, mostly from bloggers enraged by the government blockade. Among the speculations offered in those e-mails was that certain blogs could have been used by terrorist groups to coordinate operations.
“Even if that were true, it doesn’t make sense,” Mr. Griffin argued. Anyone with a domain name, he said, could effectively do the same thing on an ordinary Web site.
Published: July 18, 2006
NEW DELHI, July 18 — As India’s financial capital, Mumbai, observed a moment of silence today to commemorate the serial bombings of its commuter trains seven days ago, a blistering silence blanketed the Indian blogosphere.
For reasons yet unexplained by the authorities, the Indian government has apparently directed local Internet service providers to block access to a handful of outlets that host blogs, including the popular blogspot.com. Indian bloggers have reacted with anger and confusion, accusing the government of censorship and demanding to know why their sites have been jammed.
Nilanjana Roy, a Delhi-based writer who runs kitabkhana.blogspot.com, a literary blog, called the seeming censorship “a dangerous precedent.”
“You have a right to know what is being banned, and why it’s being banned,” she said. “I can understand if it’s China or Iran or Saudi Arabia. I’m truly appalled when it’s my country doing this.”
The ban, in theory, meant that people living in India were kept from reading anything that appeared on the blocked outlets — whether Indian blogs or otherwise. But the ban seemed far from effective. While some Internet service providers blocked access, others did not.
Many more blog afficionados simply go around the blockade by figuring out how to read their favorite sites. One Web site offered help by way of a free blog “gateway.”
“Is your blog blocked in India, Pakistan, Iran or China?” the site asked, and went on to offer instructions for outwitting the surprising shutdown.
That site was prompted by the efforts of the Pakistan Telecom Authority to block blogspot.com last February, as they attempted to prevent the proliferation of Danish cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammad. Their publication had fueled violent protests across Pakistan.
Last Thursday, a technician at a Bangalore-based service center of one Internet provider said the government had ordered the block of blogspot.com “due to security reasons.” Another service provider in New Delhi said the government, without explanation, had directed his company to block access to a list of less than a dozen Web sites. He could offer no details about the sites.
Officials at the Ministry of Communications here did not return repeated calls. An official at the ministry’s department of information and technology, Gulshan Rai, said he was aware of “two pages” that had been blocked for spreading what he called “antinational sentiments,” but was unable to provide details.
The secretary for telecommunications, D. S. Mathur, that bureau’s highest-ranking civil servant, hung up the phone when reached at home.The minister of communications, Dayanidhi Maran, was traveling in San Francisco and unavailable for comment.
If nothing else, the tempest over the restricted sites is a testament to growing government anxiety about how to control this new and mushrooming medium.
Like blogs anywhere else, Indian blogs serve as forums to pontificate on every conceivable subject: books, movies, politics, cricket. There are blogs devoted to everyday self-indulgence: one blogger, a self-described amateur photographer, writes of jogging in the monsoon, while another recalls what she wore to a cocktail party.
There are blogs, too, that strive to be public service tools, including one that within hours of the Mumbai train blasts began listing phone numbers of hospitals where victims were being taken; called mumbaihelp.blogspot.com, it is among those blocked.
Last Tuesday’s attacks on the Mumbai trains left a death toll of 182 and injured more than 700. A week later, frenetic Mumbai observed a short silence today in memory of the victims.
It is impossible to know how many Indian blogs are affected by the blocking measure. One blogger, Mitesh Vasa, from Vienna, Virginia, has documented “40,128 Indian bloggers who mention India as their country.” That does not include those who do not name on their site which country they are based in, nor others who identify their country of origin, as Peter Griffin does from Mumbai, as “utopia.”
Mr. Griffin, who helped set up the mumbaihelp site, said he woke up this morning to a furious litany of 300 e-mails, mostly from bloggers enraged by the government blockade. Among the speculations offered in those e-mails was that certain blogs could have been used by terrorist groups to coordinate operations.
“Even if that were true, it doesn’t make sense,” Mr. Griffin argued. Anyone with a domain name, he said, could effectively do the same thing on an ordinary Web site.
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