Slashdot Mirror
More Fuel For Facebook Censorship Advocates In India
thodelu writes "Close on the heels of Friday's communal clashes in a town in India that were triggered by a Facebook post which contained morphed images apparently deriding a religious place of worship, there has been another incident. City police have removed images from another similar blog post citing 'cyber criminal' laws. There has been an ongoing effort in India to censor the web which would get more backing as a result of these events. Could we be seeing another Great Firewall of China?"
Perhaps we just need to be more tolerant, no matter how opinionated the person next door is?
The article states that a young man posted a photo on Facebook which offended several people.
Several of those offended people decided to protest peacefully in front of a police station demanding his arrest.
Other people decided to protest violently by burning cars, smashing in window stores and just generally acting like idiots.
Instituting a nationwide internet censorship policy won't address the problem: impulsive, destructive people whose first course of action is violence.
At this point in the game, it doesn't matter. Muslims and Hindus have been at odds for centuries in India. The conflict has been internalized and institutionalized to the point where even if religion is somehow magically removed they would keep fighting. You still have the deep schism left over from the Partition. Northern, lighter skinned Indians look down on southern, darker skinned ones (look at Bollywood films for a perfect manifestation of this). And that's even assuming that you can remove religion from Indian society. Guess what, you can't. The caste system comes in part from religion. The most basic of traditions come from religion. People are violent. It's human nature. Hell, it's nature period. As long as there are 2 or more people left in the world, there will be violence.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil