Mamata Banerjee is attracting all the media opprobrium for her action against a Jadavpur University professor who forwarded a cartoon chain mail on the Bengal Chief Minister.In fact Banerjee has invited an unflattering response on social media networks too following which her government has told Facebook to remove the objectionable comments about her. This has only further landed Banerjee in trouble. Media has gone all out against her threatening the overarching image she cultivated by unseating CPM after more than three decades of political struggle. But her paranoia and the fear of a free for all online media isn’t exceptional. Before her it was the Telecom Minister Kapil Sibal who similarly sought curbs on the online content and called upon Facebook and the allied online channels of public communication to do the self-censoring or be ready for the government to intervene. Sibal’s move was similarly contested by the media and public quarters. But if there is one place where such proactive assault doesn’t elicit as much as a murmur of
protest from anywhere in the country, it is J&K. Be it the arrest of a professor for a deemed anti-national paragraph in a question paper, a case of sedition against a government department for an illustration in a primary class book for Urdu word Zalim (oppressor) which ‘imaginatively’ resembled a policeman or the action against youth posting objectionable content on social media, the state has acted unchallenged and uncriticized. The catch-all excuse for this action is the special security requirement for the state that is supposed to warrant early neutering of the sources of trouble. But we are not convinced. For we believe that the social media are not only a raw reflection of the sentiment of an educated section of the population in the state, it also goes some way to dissipate the anger. Once blocked, this anger and sentiment devoid of a peaceful means of expression can really take a violent form. The freedom of expression, sometimes even within some reasonably offensive bounds, is preferable to choking to allow angry sentiment and unpalatable opinions go underground.

Lastupdate on : Wed, 18 Apr 2012 21:30:00 Makkah time
Lastupdate on : Wed, 18 Apr 2012 18:30:00 GMT
Lastupdate on : Thu, 19 Apr 2012 00:00:00 IST