Last month Chinese software developer was given a suspended sentence for having created software which would allow users to avoid China’s “Great Firewall.” Having lived in China, I am well aware of the importance of Internet freedoms that many of us living in North America or Europe take for granted. As I recently wrote of Google’s Project Dragonfly, Internet freedom is something I do not take lightly, especially given the complexity that companies like Google offer in structuring a business around an anti-democratic model. Still, the curtailing of Internet use is being used as a political tool far outside of China and it is interesting to see how little media attention is being given to these areas of the world.
When traveling back to India several years ago to visit my family, I decided to combine that trip a work trip and incorporate a couple of projects among which was a film I made between Sikkim and West Bengal. Getting a visa to India, I would soon find out, was the easiest part of my trip to Sikkim. Upon arriving at this northeastern state’s border from West Bengal, I was met by a security force matched only by that of the IDF when passing into Ramallah, Palestine. I was told to go inside the office for a Restricted Area Permit (RAP) where then ensued an hour-long ordeal about what I was doing there. I don’t think the soldiers were convinced that I was making a film on tea and I wasn’t convinced that Naxalism, the Communist Party of India (Maoist), was going to interfere with my work much less that of the chai-sipping soldiers.
I soon learned how the Indian government restricts print and electronic information to this and other northeastern states in an effort to curb the rights of some of the country’s poorest population. What the BJP (Bharatiya Janta Party) government has called “terrorism” is what others like Uttar Pradesh Congress Committee President and Rajya Sabha (the upper house of the Parliament of India) member, Raj Babbar, call “revolutionaries” and the Internet is one of the primary frontiers that the India’s Modi-led government is cracking down in what it deems to be “insurgents” from within.
While India is on the forefront of software development and web marketing agencies, it is also a hub for the steel, petroleum, diamond, and banking industries. A country of incredible wealth and poverty, India’s recent history is one of class revolution with groups like the Naxalites and many other leftist groups gaining prominence since the 1970s when class consciousness was firmly fomented within many party’s political ideology. With the increase of mining companies on Tribal lands, the growing economic disparity, and the absence of schools, medical services, and some of the country’s highest poverty levels, it is no wonder that Indians in the northeast are rebelling against the government. Logically, the Internet is a principal space for political organization across vast distances—especially with encrypted apps like WhatsApp.
Earlier this year the government of Tripura in northeast India was forced to cut the Internet due to a spate of murders where individuals were targeted due to fake news reports spread through WhatsApp. Yet while investigating these reports, I was very conscious of the fact that the Indian government was also capitalizing on these lynchings in order to suppress the electronic frontier in this region. According to Freedom House, in 2017 India scored 41 of 100 (0 being the most free) on its Internet Freedom Score despite the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in August 2017 which recognized privacy as a fundamental right. Most of the censorship on Internet freedom took place, not coincidentally, in states where there is the most political contention: Kashmir and Jammu, Arunachal Pradesh, Darjeeling, and Manipur. And let me be clear here, the “terrorism” that India has fought in restricting Internet access was, for instance, a total shutdown of the Internet between 17 and 18 March 2014 in Jammu and Kashmir which was meant to stop separatists from addressing a United Nations Human Rights Council event via video link in Geneva. And then again in July 2014 during protests in the region.
And while Google and other media giants have fought India’s censorship demands in the past, one only has to see how Google also changed course on China in order to be concerned that the same can occur in India. And while Google’s initiative to empower women in digital literacy in India, “Internet Saathi” has taken off, I am not the first to be wary of Google’s ability to perform a voltafaccia on this subject.
Google can work towards Internet literacy in India all it wants. The problem is not merely if people have the ability to read what they find online, but foremost the issue is if there is content to read at all.
