19 yr old blogger faces criminal proceedings as case is filed against him for hate content
(Pic Courtesy : iStockphoto)
I am really pissed off and angry too!
I recently read this article in a reputed daily ( I dare not write the name lest I be sued!)
It talks about how a young blogger from Kerala was made to face legal action and made to appear in court and explain his actions.
Click here to read the entire report
To quote from the report, it all boils down to one conclusion now :
“Bloggers may no longer express their uninhibited views on everything under the sun, for the Supreme Court said they may face libel and even prosecution for the blog content.”
In simple words,
Our Freedom of Expression and Freedom of Speech is being taken from us!
The boy in the above mentioned report was made to face legal action just because he had started a community on Orkut against a certain political party and the comments on his community/blog indicated that the actions of the party were dividing the nation on the basis of region and caste! (What I really wonder is if one would start filing cases against these political parties on the basis of ‘hate speech’, ‘hate content’, ‘violence’ and so on…would all the courts of law of the world put together be able to give justice or keep the cases pending? )
In this country of ours, which is the largest ‘DEMOCRACY’ of the world, its citizens are not allowed to exercise their basic rights without being afraid of facing legal proceedings. This is the democracy that our great freedom fighters and leaders dreamt of!
A place where the common people would be forced to remain silent and adjust and adapt to the amazing bullshit thrown around by a bunch of imbeciles who label themselves as leaders of the nation and weave false dreams of ” a stronger, taller and secure India”.
The only right that the leaders/politicians want the common man of India to exercise is the Right to Vote. They say, choose responsibly the person you think is right. Choose a candidate who will take the nation ahead on the path of progress. (Now that the elections are near you will listen to this being thrown around by all politicos a dozen times a day!)
But then to speak of selecting a good candidate, we as citizens are given a choice from a select few. We do not select who stands for elections. It is like going to a stock clearance sale where your options are limited. You either buy the goods or you walk out without buying goods.
Coming back to the main topic of this post, these so-called protectors of culture and Indianness are now after us bloggers. I think they got bored of bashing up valentine couples and ‘indecent’ ladies in pubs. Now its the turn of the vile bloggers because it is they who still express their thoughts freely and write what they feel. Such people are potentially dangerous to their ‘noble’ activities of ‘saving the nation’ (what they really are after is saving and growing their vote banks).
I agree that indecent and abusive language should be restricted and not used against others on a blog. That should be curbed.
But what are we suppoesd to do when a blogger is booked under a certain section of the law while politicians and other big-wigs go scot-free in this land of ours.
Personaly, I think the complaint filed got much attention and fast response because it was done so by a member of a political party.
What should a common man do when these courts of law fail to punish our tainted politicians and other criminals while innocents are brought to book very quickly?
They say ‘Justice delayed is Justice denied’ . I do not think this holds true in India where people who file a case in their youth get the results on their death-bed. (or even after they are long dead). What do you expect if the courts waste their valuable time on such trivial matters?
( One of my friends had gone to a court to apply for his Domicile certificate. He saw a case being heard before one of the judges. It was filed by one man on his neighbour and both were arguing furiously and the judge was listening intently before doling out scoops of justice. Want to know what the case was all about? One man accused the other of stealing his plastic tumbler! You tell me if this is trivial or not!)
If you ask my opinion, the Supreme Court should have better work to do. I think it should set up a Quality Check Counter. Only those cases that the court deems fit to dedicate its time to should pass this counter.
While the culture-protectors and the language-protectors go on rightfully beating/killing fellow country-men the courts are busy punishing violators of law such as this young blogger from Kerala.
What will probably happen is that the young boy’s spirit has been crushed after going through such proceedings at a tender age of 19. Or if he is a fighter and a tough one he will stand up and still continue to do what he believes in!
Today they have quashed attempts of one blogger tomorrow it could be all of us!
Rise blogger brothers, Rise!!
Pranjal Wagh
This work by Pranjal A. Wagh is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 India License
3 comments
Nice topic you brought forward. Well case in India would remain immutable for years and decades. I better check out what was then the meaning of word Democracy and what is the meaning now..probably it must have changed.
We make a bad use of this democracy. It was a gift to us but we ruined that too.
Beware : Now they can sue u too !
U have commented against the Supreme Court verdict(which in itself is the final one)
Ur comments are against the whole system of governance, so be aware of this !
Have you ever realized this ?
Although your anger might seem well placed, there are a lot of people who blog just for the sake of taking out their frustrations. Even when you blog, you have to be careful about how you are conveying your thoughts because the internet is the largest public platform and it is also a free medium. Being such a vast medium, it is available to a large audience and one can never be too sure as to how others interpret our sentences.
Your comments enclosed in brackets in the third paragraph (What I really wonder is if one would start filing cases against these political parties on the basis of . . .)
well if the boy genuinely felt that the said party was at fault, then instead of pointlessly flaming about it on his blog or page or whatever, he could have approached some NGO and tried to file a PIL (public interest litigation which is a part of INDIAN LAW for exactly such scenarios and the Court of Law is bound to pass a verdict on such a Case within a predetermined amount of time). which would have saved him the embarrassment and also it would have been a justifiable use of his time as opposed to sitting at home and grumbling about it on his blog. It would also have saved him a lot of trouble.
Moreover, the content of the above post seems to be in slight discord with one of your other posts where you seem to be urging people to vote :).
However, i think bloggers should exercise discretion. To give you a crude example, suppose someone posts some angry comments about the recent killings of police and military men by the Maoist activists. Now just because we hear that people are being killed by a particular group, we CAN NOT claim that these people are all bad and rotten to their core. Especially since our Government has not yet issued any such declarations.
These are very sensitive issues which need to be handled diplomatically without someone mouthing off what he thinks about the whole affair.
When someone puts up a hate post, a heated discussion immediately ensues. People who are for something will always quarrel with those who are against it. And this, essentially starts a wild fire of heated exchanges which can go totally out of control.
While posting on sensitive issues, it is best to first study the entire incident from every perspective provided by every means that is available to us. Only then do we gain the authority to post our comments for all to see. When we start researching about such social issues, we come to understand that even the ones which appear to be plain and simple to understand are actually very much complex.
As regards your comments about there being a quality check at the counter of the court, while the idea does seem appealing, it is in contention with the basic right of every Indian to appeal to a higher level of the judiciary system. That is just the way our constitution (or any other democratic constitution for that matter) was made. Tough luck, i know, but we just have to live with it!
Moral :
Just because you can; does not necessarily mean that you should .