The Centre seems to be willing to go to any length to curb freedom of expression, only for the sake of the country’s ‘image’. This is despite a no-brainer — that such bans turn out to be useless in a globally connected digital world. Two recent episodes bear this out.

The Delhi High court has rapped the government for preventing Greenpeace activist Priya Pillai from visiting the UK. It has said that the word “offloaded” be expunged from her visa. Pillai was on a visit to the UK to brief British parliamentarians over alleged violations of human and environmental rights by corporates in India. Pillai was not terribly inconvenienced, however; she deposed before the parliamentarians using Skype! The government counsel, during the court hearings, said Pillai would have tarnished the country’s image by speaking about conditions of tribals in the Singrauli area.

Now, to the second and far more talked about episode: the ban on the BBC film, India’s Daughter . Again, we heard the government, in the form of Home Minister Rajnath Singh, trotting out the image argument. If it was the ‘development’ enthusiasts bearing down upon Pillai, here it was a patriarchal mindset unable to deal with its own sense of shame. Once again, Digital India won; almost anyone and everyone with an internet connection would have watched the film. Those who couldn’t, know about it. As for image, the government seems to have lost out.

But it would be naive to think that the government did not anticipate the Digital riposte. The state would have known that it cannot stop Pillai from going on Skype or Leslee Udwin from streaming her film online. But it has perhaps made its point — that ‘we can’t stop you, not yet, but we can make your life difficult’?

Senior Reporter

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