This from India Today

In the midst of a debate on monitoring content, a Delhi court has restrained social networking sites including Facebook, Google and Youtube from webcasting any “anti-religious” or “anti-social” content promoting hatred or communal disharmony.

Additional Civil Judge Mukesh Kumar, in an ex-parte order, directed the social networking websites to remove the objectionable content in the form photographs, videos or text which might hurt religious sentiments.

The court on Tuesday passed the order on a civil suit filed by Mufti Aijaz Arshad Qasmi through advocate Santosh Pandey who had also submitted the printouts of the contents

Someone needs to give judges, ministers, politicians and bureaucrats a crash course on the nature of the Internet. The fact that it is not centralised. the fact that it is not controlled. The fact that it is made up of billions of computers across the world. Even if the content is deleted from social networking websites, and doesn’t get replaced, doesn’t mean it won’t exist on the net and won’t be shared again. And, there is no way anybody can guarantee that this ‘offensive’ stuff won’t be shared again.

On a more practical note, practically everything modern can be considered to be hurting religious sentiments. To start off, every religion can be considered offensive to someone else from some other religion. When the revealed religions say there is but one God, and he is ours, it can be considered offensive to all non revealed religions. Religious traditions like Buddhism which dont have a God at its core, it can be considered to be offensive to those who believe in the concept of God. Religious traditions like Hinduism which accept animism, atheism, monotheism and polytheism would probably blow the brains of those who don’t understand variety. So, what all do you ban ?

So what kind of content would be declared offensive in the future ?

• Would Atheist material be hurting religious sentiments?
• Modernity & modern laws – universal suffrage, equality of genders, universal education, banning of child marriages, equal rights, the rights of women, the rights of sexual minorities, – could these be considered as hurting religious sentiments?
• Constitutional Law can it be considered to be anti- religion and hurting religious sentiments.
• How about videos that talk about women’s emancipation? The right of a woman not to be beaten or raped inside a marriage – is that anti-religion? Is the concept of divorce and material associated with it anti religion
• Is science anti-religion ?
• Is content that talks about evolution anti religion?
• Does content that talks about the right of Dalits to worship in temples, be considered to be anti-religion.

People who file cases against content or cause violence based on their response to content are guilty. Not the content. It is their ego responding. Not God. Not religion. Politicians and courts need to start ignoring this offended ego. 

We jump up and down like a bunch of scalded kittens when an obscure group tries to get a ban on the Bhagvad Gita… they are mirroring our actions.What is religion for one, is offence for the other. there will be no end to this, unless someone draws a lakshman rekha on this silliness. If something offends you, don’t read. But, expecting the world to share your outrage on the offense is stupidity. The system is encouraging such stupidity.

Religion or God, don’t need mere mortals to defend them. They can manage on their own. The greatest blasphemy is to assume God needs your help … S/he doesn’t.