INDIA IS A DEMOCRATIC NATION. Maybe this is the first sentence that every Indian citizen would say to describe the country. In old school sense, it is true. The leaders who made our Constitution kept this in mind in every law they made and every amendment that they still do.

However, over the last few months and especially during the last week my doubts on our strength as a democratic nation began to gather strength (sic). I have been reading about matter that makes me think of my freedom – because I believe that people sitting on their luxury chairs in Delhi are now restless. They have witnessed the Anna Hazare movement, which to an extent gathered nationwide strength and global patronage through activities on the Social Networking sites. They also beheld the anger in people, which was expressed through online journals against Kalmadi and the façade around the issues surrounding the Common Wealth Games misadventure.

Maybe they thought that how we, the same imprudent ‘junta’ who elected them, crowned them, let them run our nation, ruin our nation; are now so vigilant and vocal especially through Social Networking. Maybe, we, the people, broke their sweet dream of a ‘Five Year Plan (a.k.a ‘F.Y.P’, Fool Your People) where whatever they do goes unpunished, unpublished and ignored. Furthermore, they go at all lengths to justify that it is not their fault – they are innocent.

It is us who knowingly or un-knowingly permitted them believe that since we do not judge when we vote, so we won’t say anything. Aha!, we also gave them the impression that the websites like Facebook and Twitter are just the playground for teens where we go to add friends and to have fun. Nevertheless, one fine morning, when they realized ‘Oh my God! What are these people up-to’, they appointed their best man, Kapil Sibal to present a solution, and voila, he grouped up authorities from Facebook, Yahoo, Google, Twitter and said very humbly “I respect FREEDOM OF SPEECH, but I don’t want to demolish our cultural status and discipline, so I want to screen all that goes online”. Wow! Checkmate?.

Just few questions for Kapil Sibal that came to my mind. Where is the moral when you kill a female foetus? Where is the discipline when Kalmadi does such a scam and nearly gets out? Where is the democracy where we still have to bear such a lame system for 5 long years? Where is the humanity when nearly 2 out of 10 people sleep without having a decent meal? Why the cases that include politicians, viz. the ‘Bhanwari Devi’ case, takes so long to come to a conclusion?

It was said that “the images and statements on social media sites risked fanning tensions in India, which has a long history of deadly religious violence”, then let me remind our leaders that history also has tales of the Ayodhya Kand, Riots in Gujrat, Charaa-Ghotala, and many more and plus the fact that at that time Social Networking was not so wide spread in India. Then why don’t you come up with solutions to address the root cause of those burning issues like those mentioned above instead of monitoring people on such platforms like the Social Networking sites?

Here, I am not taking sides of people who post offensive material. There is ‘smart-window’ of deciding what is offensive, and what is not. According to a majority, offensive content means the content which is disrespectful and hurts someone’s feelings, whereas the content that shows the real side of a story is not offensive. Your intention seems to be banning social life and not just screening it. Online netizens also need to be converted to puppets?

We are free. We were free. And we always will be. The acts / statements / decisions like this shows us that we are the one responsible for it, because we are the one who chose them to rule, and many of us don’t even care to participate in voting, or polls or any movements, thereby this is the result we get. So at the end, I can only pray that it would be best if Facebook, Google, Yahoo and Twitter would end their services in India instead of screening the content, because that way our leaders would know the importance of Internet.

As it goes…

‘apni azzadi ko hum, hargiz bhoola sakte nahin’

‘sar kataa sakte hain, lekin sar jhukaa sakte nahin !!!’