'The Modi Question': Shh…everything is a secret, including the blocking order

Somewhere in Central Europe, thousands of civilians are struggling to survive the biting cold because a depredatory ursine neighbour repeatedly bombs out the power supply facilities that helped keep them warm. Closer home, at JNU, my alma mater, hundreds of students braved the January chill to watch a documentary film that the authorities do not want them to see.

First came the internet blackout, followed by a power blackout. But that did not dampen their spirits. In fact, the curiosity virus spread rapidly. Soon, the film was being screened in other places like Aligarh, Jadavpur, Hyderabad and Kerala, much to the chagrin of local authorities caught unawares by youthful ingenuity and exuberance.

Also Read | Why has a documentary rattled Narendra Modi’s government?

If in Eastern Europe, it is a ‘special military operation’ to conquer lands, here it looks like a desperate effort to control minds. Area domination tactics need not always draw blood, but the violence behind all such mindless assertions of power is unmistakable.

There are several questions that require answers. Which parts of the BBC documentary about the 2002 communal violence in Gujarat have put the government in a tizzy? Who in the establishment watched it and decided to block it? Where is the order explaining the reasons for blocking? All that we have in the public domain is a condemnation of the film by the External Affairs Ministry’s spokesperson, and a tweet from the Information and Broadcasting Ministry (MoI&B)’s adviser announcing the ban.

The problem lies in the manner in which the powers granted under the Information Technology Act to block social and digital media content are being exercised. Section 69A permits blocking of public access to digital content that is detrimental to India’s sovereignty and integrity, defence and security, friendly relations with foreign States, public order and crime prevention.

Rules were made in 2009, under the UPA regime, empowering the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) to issue directions to the intermediaries to take down such content. The NDA added another set of Rules in 2021 empowering MoI&B to block access to content that is paedophilic, pornographic, racist, or which denigrates the dignity of women or peddles patently untrue and harmful information.

While the 2009 Rules require the maintenance of strict confidentiality for records relating to all blocking decisions, the manner of implementation of the 2021 Rules have turned even the blocking orders into sarkari secrets despite the absence of any such stipulation.

Yet, neither set of Rules were taken up by the Parliamentary Committees on Subordinate Legislation for detailed scrutiny as they ought to have. In fact, the Lok Sabha Secretariat admitted in an RTI reply that the 2021 Rules have not even been tabled in the House, despite a statutory obligation on the government to do so. Majoritarian politics often takes the shape of a bulldozer -- real or virtual.

In 2014, the government could invoke the 2009 Rules only eight times to block content on Twitter. In 2022, the amended Rules were applied in more than 3,400 instances. Twitter petitioned the High Court of Karnataka against some of these actions and submitted copies of the blocking orders which MeitY served on it, to the Bench and believe it or not, to MeitY itself, in sealed cover!

George Orwell had said it well in a draft preface to his classic work- Animal Farm: “The enemy is the gramophone mind, whether or not one agrees with the record that is being played at the moment.” A mindset of secrecy remains embedded in our governance processes since colonial times. Despite electoral promises to do different things, successive governments are yet to do things differently.