Blogging community outraged at anti-Raj censor

After a blogger was questioned by the cyber crime branch, for his comments against Raj Thackeray, the blogging community has hit the keyboards writing against censorship

The Internet was once hailed as the world's only medium free from censorship. Blogs were once tom-tommed as a space where netizens could air their views, protected from prosecution by binary armour.

But when a North Indian telecommunications engineer decided to use his blog to vent against MNS supremo Raj Thackeray, Mumbai's cyber crime branch were quick to pounce. Their reaction sparked off a controversy that traveled the information highway at the speed of light.

"The blogging community is a group of people who can't express themselves vocally, so they write," says blogger, Himanshu Dubey. Dubey feels that if blogging is censored, or monitored, then there is no point having blogs.

"Then again, if you write something like this, you are bound to come under the scanner. But there is a difference between expressing one's thoughts, and actually threatening someone; he was just expressing his thoughts," says journalist, Nikita Basu.

Blogging has had a profound impact on the globe's social fabric. And some bloggers, like Supriya Joshi believe that "if the police think this sort of writing will incite people they are highly mistaken, at least he has written about it. There are hundreds of people who are thinking about it. How are they going to stop them?"

Bloggers, across the city, have come out in support of the engineer, and many are supporting some from of protest. "I think the blogging society should start blogging about this on a mass scale. It should be an online protest," says Dubey
h_namita@dnaindia.net