Modiji, Remember When You Had Tweeted This? Yeah, You've Might Have Made A U Turn

Kunal Anand
Kunal Anand
Updated on Feb 26, 2015, 18:59 IST-1.3 K Shares
modi tweet

Here's some context before we get to Modiji. Back in the day when defeating the Congress was the only thing on our mind, Modi was the glorious hero who spoke out against things like censorship. Kapil Sibal had faced massive amounts of flak for the UPA's 'tweet and go to jail' section 66A of the IT Act.

It used to be incredibly crazy - someone got arrested because he tweeted that former Union finance minister's son Karti P Chidambaram amassed more than Robert Vadra.

Then, the UPA added a guideline to pacify people - you needed approval from a deputy commissioner of police or an inspector general to get someone arrested. Which made sense - two girls had been arrested for a Facebook comment that questioned why Mumbai needed to be shutdown for Shiv Sena patriarch Bal Thackeray's funeral.

Within months, a BJP Rajya Sabha MP was among many people across parties critiquing the act. Even a Trinamool MP sought to repeal the act - even when it was used to arrest a Calcutta professor for an email joke on Mamata Banerjee! Clearly, everyone hated it!

Fast forward to 2014, the wake of the elections. Modi’s in power, and all is going to be progressive. Yay! India’s IT & Law minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, presented a moderate interpretation of the act. In his words. “Self regulation should be the mode.”

Now cut to today, when the Centre justified how to the the Supreme Court we needed to add even more restriction to the internet, as compared to print and television. 

Additional solicitor general Tushar Mehta’s logic: the posting of offensive messages on social networking site. But think about it – when was the last time you saw morphed photos in your newspaper? Or a morphed MMS shown on the news – with someone intentionally saying that it was the right thing? There is clearly room for misuse, and the great liberal stance of Modi is missing at a time when people like Taslima Nasreen have fatwas on their head, and only have the Internet as a platform to speak. So if your stance on the act is to declare censorship instead of a clear understanding, it doesn't bode well. Just tell us what will get us arrested - and what won't. 

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