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?"

Religious tensions percolate under surface...

[Anonymous Coward]

... in India, Facebook blamed. Same results probably would have occurred if dead-tree distribution was used, although it's less likely such would make Slashdot.

It's the religion, stupid

[mrseth]

What we need is less religion, not more censorship...

Re:It's the religion, stupid

[linatux]

Perhaps we just need to be more tolerant, no matter how opinionated the person next door is?

Square peg....round hole

[bennini]

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.

Re:It's the religion, stupid

[Nidi62]

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.

Boo Hoo

[Anonymous Coward]

Some people got trolled on the internet and responded with violence. They don't deserve any sympathy.

Story tagged as censorship?

[Anonymous Coward]

But I bet you little fagets can't' mod this +5 insightful

NIGGERS

Can you?

Show me that you don't agree with what I say but will die for my right to say it. SHow me a +5 mod on this post. Hell, no need to die for it. Just spend some mod points.

We won't see it. We'll see it at -1 in short order. The United States us a bunch of spineless hypocrites.

Re:the real cause

[JWW]

Are you serious?

Mao outlawed religion and while he managed to solve and get rid of a lot of his problems (people), I think he made the world's problems worse.

I am so sick of all of this, "just get rid of religion and everything will be peachy" crap.

The biggest killers the world has ever know killed for the nation, the party, their culture and for themselves, not for religion.

An also, how do you plan to get rid of religions, are you going to round up the faithful and send them to camps?

Re:The solution is censorship?

[bhagwad]

Punish anyone who indulges in violence and ignore the religion.

Re:It's the religion, stupid

[TheRaven64]

There are no problems between Jews and Christians, Buddhists and Shintos, Hindus and Sikhs, Zoroastrians and Jains

Spoken like someone who hasn't been reading the news from India. Or did you just miss the stories about (Christian) nuns being attacked by Hindus trying to force them to convert? And, no doubt, you missed the people in Ireland being attacked for being the wrong flavour of Christian?

Religion is an intrinsically intolerant idea. Any religion that claims to be the sole arbiter of truth can not coexist with others that make the same claim.