I have just been alerted to this thread. I am surprised, astonished, stupefied, mortified, petrified and flabbergasted that you could even think I approve of any kind of censorship. I am a staunch believer in freedom of speech. I made clear of my disgust for banning in my blog: http://next-stop-insanity.blogspot.com/2006/07/harmless-banning.html (with a link back to you, for heaven’s sake).

Just be clear, that anon is not me. Probably somebody from my company. I hope this will vindicate me from your suprirsing, astonishing, stupifiying, mortifying, petrifiying and flabbergasting accusation :)

TD

And I wouldn’t dismiss punishment as a deterrent quite so easily. There are plenty of things that anger us but that we dont’ react to for fear of getting caught. It may not stop riots entirely, but I don’t see any reason to believe that it won’t make a difference.

Riots happen as a release to levels of rage that build up. Rage that is fuelled over time by a lot of things. I don’t think censorship is the answer. But neither is “punishment”. This isn’t one murder that you want to punish. This isn’t one act of vandalism. Or one theft. It’s a mob. And mobs don’t listen to reason.

My question is, if the government’s approach to the solution isn’t the right one, then we must suggest a viable alternative.

Nilu: I know I’m being illogical. What I’m unable to point out is, What is illogical in my argument? I don’t believe it, but I don’t know how to argue against it either. It’s what a lot of people believe, or they wouldn’t support censorship of “some content”. My question is, exactly where are they wrong, and what is the alternate solution?

If you are indeed the devil’s advocate, is it also some kinda rule that you should be illogical? Is this like the bizzaro superman thing?

But if the opposite of logic is illogic, isn’t the opposite of good, bad? Therefore should you not be bad at being illogical and hence be logical? Something wrong somewhere….

1. “how can you prevent something like rioting, without enforcing censorship of content that leads to rioting?”

By creating a credible threat of punishment after the rioting. If we really want to stop riots in the country we need the political will to ensure that those who instigate or participate in riots get severely punished. As long as rioters continue to get away with it, no amount of censorship is going to help.

I think we often end up taking the prevention vs. cure analogy too far. “Prevention is better than cure” makes sense where we’re talking about diseases because the probability of disease is independent of the efficacy of the cure. That’s not true of human action, however. With something like riots, greater certainty of punishment means lower probability of occurence. Cure is prevention.

2. In the hypothetical example you cite, I would say the person to go after is the someone who takes up rioteering in his name. Not this fictional Thackeray of yours. We can’t go around banning anything and everything that could be used to incite violence. Because almost anything can be twisted and used for that purpose. I could, for instance, take the bit about Thackeray from your comment and use it as the basis to launch an attack against Thackeray. But that would hardly be your fault. If you really wanted to ban everything that could be used to stir up communal feelings, you’d have to start by banning all religious texts. And I’d love to see the government that would have the guts to try that.

In that sense, censorship is definitely bad. Because it gives government bodies the authority to decide – mostly arbitrarily – what its citizens can or cannot see. Whether it be the banning of the Da Vinci Code, blocking websites, or forcing a movie director to cut scenes from a movie.

But then I’m in the habit of playing Devil’s advocate inside my head, and all this talk about censorship has got me thinking.

During the Babri Masjid/riots thing, Bal Thackeray was said to be “personally responsible, not only for inciting the mobs through his incendiary speeches, but also directly coordinating the movement of the rioters” (source: Wikipaedia). So, of course he was actively involved in the violence.

But let us imagine, that he hadn’t actually done that. Let’s say he had made public speeches to the effect of – “Muslims have no right to live in India. Ask them to leave.” Let’s say that this caused someone else to actually plan and coordinate the rioteering.

Let’s say Thackeray was not living in India, but was just as popular inspite of that. Let’s say his speeches/articles recommending violence against Muslims, were printed in Indian newspapers, and read by someone who took up the rioteering in his name.

If at such a time the government banned “articles of an incendiary nature”, or “content that may incite unrest”, would that be okay?

Somehow, I am uncomfortable with the idea of not allowing censorship in such a case, if tensions are actually very high.

And yet, allowing censorship in such an extreme means allowing censorship under all conditions. Who gets to decide when tensions are high? Who gets to decide what content is safe?

While I don’t agree with Anon’s argument as a whole, I must agree with his/her statement that censorship is a tricky issue.

No sane person wants to see riots happening around them. We wish the government and the police would do all they can to control conditions to make sure they don’t. Isn’t prevention better than cure? And yet, how can you prevent something like rioting, without enforcing censorship of content that leads to rioting?

And how can you implement censorship without trampling on someone’s rights?

Every bit of me knows that censorship is wrong. And yet, I can’t counter this particular argument.

Your thoughts?