Earlier this week, the Indian government acknowledged that it had asked internet service providers to block about 250 web pages in an effort to contain ethnic tensions between Muslims and people from the northeast.
Almost immediately, Internet-policy analysts and journalists started trying to figure out what was blocked. What they have found is a clumsy, haphazard dragnet that has ensnared posts, articles and Twitter accounts that do not appear to have any hate speech on them.
In fact, in some cases, the government has ordered blocked the very sites that exposed reports of violence against Muslims as false. Rumors about anti-Muslim violenc e in Assam reportedly helped to spark a riot in Mumbai on Aug. 11 in which two people died, and helped create an atmosphere of fear in Bangalore, Pune, Chennai and elsewhere, leading tens of thousands of students and other migrants from the northeast to crowd trains and buses leaving for their home states.
Yet, one of items the government ordered blocked is a post written almost a month before the Mumbai riot by a Pakistani writer for the Express Tribune newspaper, Faraz Ahmed. “>His post, which is no longer accessible to many in India, was early in pointing out that pictures floating around on Facebook and other sites purporting to show Muslims being beaten and killed in Myanmar and northeastern India were taken from natural disasters and police action in China, Thailand and elsewhere in Asia from years past. (The page was not accessible from the New York Times bureau in New Delhi but was available in Mumbai.)
An analysis of the blocked sites by The Center for Internet and Society in Bangalore shows that the pages blocked include reports on AlJazeera.com, the web site of the news network; Firstpost.com, an Indian news site; and the British newspaper The Telegraph. “The people and companies hosting the material should have been asked to remove it, instead of ordering Internet service providers to block them,†the analysis said. “All larger sites have clear content removal policies, and encouraging communal tensions and hate speech generally wouldn't be tolerated.â€
Policy makers have also sought to block the Twitter accounts for reporters, humorists and columnists, including acerbic critics of the government like Kanchan Gupta and several accounts that appear to be parodies of the Twitter account of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, according to documents published by the Economic Times.
The government has not publicly disclosed a list of the blocked sites and accounts, but several have been circulating. The C.I .S. used one such list. It found that in many cases pages supposed to be blocked were often available using a version of its web address meant to provide more security.
On Thursday evening, the Economic Times newspaper published what it says are the orders from the India's Ministry of Communications and Information Technology that list the web addresses and Twitter account names the government has asked Internet service providers to block. A ministry spokesperson didn't immediately return calls for comment.
India's government has been warily watching the internet and social media sites since violence started in the Northeast last month. Last week, the government sent a notice to a number of media houses asking them to monitor online comments submitted by readers, in light of the volatile situation, media executives said. Officials have also blamed groups in Pakistan for doctoring images in an effort to incite Indian Muslims.
“This is a cleverly devised st rategy to switch attention from the government's own inability to handle the situation in Assam,†by blaming both the Internet and Pakistan, said Shivam Vij, a journalist in New Delhi who runs Kafila, a popular website about media and free speech.
The blocking orders are so random as to suggest the government determines which sites should be blocked by assigning a bureaucrat to use Google to search for hate speech, Mr. Vij said.
This isn't the first time the Indian government has displayed a heavy hand when trying to block websites and information. In 2006, the government blocked a number of blogs, including one by an American teenager who called herself “Princess Kimberly.†In 2009, the government banned a popular and graphic online comic strip, Savita Bhabhi, about a housewife with an active sex life. And last year, the government asked social media sites to prescreen user content for disparaging or inflammatory materials.
Indian officials have also required social networking sites like Orkut to take down posts deemed offensive to ethnic and religious groups.
A spokesman for Mr. Singh, Pankaj Pachauri, told the Economic Times that the orders to block web pages and Twitter accounts were not an effort to squelch criticism of the government.
“In fact we welcome it as genuine feedback,†he told the newspaper in an apparent reference to criticism. “In some instances, actions have been initiated on complaints made to PM's Twitter account. We also have no quarrel with people parodying PM as long as it is in the limits of good humor.â€
