This is ridiculous. India is a democracy. Spirited debate and criticism is salutary and necessary. I am deeply disappointed by this decision. It only strengthens those voices in the subcontinent that equate critique to betrayal.
That makes it sound like it's a binary thing. There's an ever-mutating spectrum that all countries are placed on. There's always some "democratic" countries that have so little generational experience being one that they still don't quite understand how to behave like one. Corruption and authoritarianism comes so easily. Arguably the same is true for the other end of the spectrum: countries that have relished the pleasures of democracy for so long that they forget why it's a big !@#$ing deal to protect free speech in all its forms.
You end up with countries with a natural inclination to shut John Oliver up and other countries who don't realise they need to be very upset about, and resistant to the forces that push for that.
So Hitler doesn't have as negative a connotation in india and most of the non-western world just like Churchill doesn't have as negative a connotation in israel or the west as he does in india or the rest of the non-western world.
History is much more complex than we are told it is. It isn't black and white. That's why traveling is so important. You realize that everyone is living in their own little bubble.
Please tell me exactly how India’s stance on prioritizing Christians, Buddhists, Hindus etc is worse than the US stance of prioritizing just Christians
Both are bad? I'd think most people who disagree with Modi's government's policies also disagree with the policies of the Trump administration. Both countries are pluralistic democracies without state religions.
The state does not always have to directly constrain speech to create an environment hostile to free expression. Though they've certainly censored media connected to controversial topics like Kashmir before. In a sense, this sort of voluntary self-censorship is even more concerning, because it reflects a certain political temperature.
I believe they shut down all internet access in Kashmir, for months, following the conversion of Kashmir from a State into a Territory. Internet is now "back", in the sense that only 300+ white sites are now accessible again.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/26/world/asia/kashmir-intern...
So yeah... India is a troubled democracy with a tenuous relationship with freedom of speech.
So how to draw the distinction between this sort of self-censorship and the self-censorship that has often been seen as a positive outcome by those who defend it with the rational that the company is a private organization and isn't beholden to offer any concepts such as freedom of speech?
