Facebook Censorship in India

Facebook removes posts, images and videos posted by it's users if a government asks it to do so. And guess what? Indian government is number 1 in doing so. Turkey takes the second position and Pakistan the third. Since this years May, (What a coincidence!) Indian govt forced Facebook to remove about 5,000 posts, Pakistan about 1500, according to a Facebook report. You should realise you're not doing a good job, when your country is top on the list where it is followed by Turkey and Pakistan.

This brings me to the main problem. India is a very very sensitive and conservative  country. It goes nuts when somebody speaks something against it. Not necessarily when somebody speaks against India, but also when somebody speaks against Hinduism, which from this year's May, is equivalent to speaking against India. It goes so nuts that it threatens people who speak such things and also people who don't but somehow are related to the person who spoke. Like that time, when a teenagers was arrested for a Facebook post, questioning the reason behind shut down of Mumbai, after the death of Balasaheb Thackeray, founder of Mumbai's dominant political party ShivSena, which openly promotes Hinduism in a secular state. And that girl's uncle's hospital was attacked and vandalised by mob. What did her uncle do? His whole mistake was being her uncle?
In some other incidents, when somebody posted something, mobs vandalised public property like buses and threw stones at stores. These mobs are secretly supported and even provoked by political parties, because when people are imposed by the fear that their religion is under attack, they inherently vote for the party that has image of saviour, even though such parties pose no promising agenda for the development. These mobs are usually composed of unemployed youth, which is the result of the failure of these political parties in developing the country. This becomes a vicious circle, and every single person in the country suffers from it in one way or other. The people who post these things are denied their freedom of speech. Mobs who vandalise public property end up in jail at the end of the day, but are sometimes freed by the use of political power, this solves neither of their problems like poverty and unemployment. The government has to waste money in order to replace or repair vandalised property. Voters are fooled into electing corrupt politicians.
The media and the educated class of the Indian society also goes nuts when somebody trolls something on Facebook or Twitter, that allegedly "hurts emotions of people". Some of them lawfully fight against these posts in order to get them removed and force the authors of these post to apologize. Like that time, when a third class film director said something defaming a Hindu god Ganapti and controversy sparked on the social as well as other medias. He was forced to delete that tweet. This publicity stunt of his, wouldn't have had any meaning if Indian people respected freedom of speech, and weren't bothered by what some stupid guys thinks about their gods. But they do, and even educated people endorse the religious fanaticism in India, and claim to be nationalist, because they think that the only way India will develop is by suppressing minority religions. And they are outraged when somebody poses different views than them and mistakenly express them. The hypocrisy in this is that the same people who go nuts when somebody defames Hindu idols, are the people who can be found defaming secular founding fathers of India, like Gandhi and Nehru, who hold the same position of respect in the hearts of numerous Indians as the position of Hindu idols in the hearts of Hindu nationalists.
Furthermore, government says that it removes Facebook posts in order to maintain peace and prevent riots. One of the strongest arguments about censorship of social media is that, one's freedom shall not affect other people's freedom, he should use his freedom responsibly. The logical fallacy that lies in this argument is blaming the person whose post allegedly started riots. If people get offended by any comment and start rioting, it's the problem with the people who take part in riot. They cannot stand an opposing view. It is their problem that they can't handle their emotions. It is not the problem of the person who offended them. If somebody says something offensive to you on a social network, you can just unfriend or block them. You have the right to not listen to them and therefore complaining that some post is affecting your freedom is outright stupid. Thats why giving this as a reason to censor social networks is wrong.
In conclusion, India needs to understand what, and whom to take seriously, and what criticisms, trolls and offenses to ignore. It needs to remember the basic principle behind the founding of the country, which was freedom, and freedom of speech is apparently under attack by it's own government. Whether the national security or freedom of individual is more important is a question facing many Western democracies as well, and it is the one that needs to be debated and thought upon. Yet, in case of India, I think both is simultaneously achievable if Indian people are willing to behave more maturely and adopt the basic principles of our democracy. How can we get them to do it, I think the answer lies once again in strong education system focused at producing good citizens!