Boycott MakeMyTrip: Social media mob attacks company after co-founder’s beef ban tweets, uninstalls app: A set of tweets kicked off a row and has already created a lot of noise. Keyur Joshi, the co-founder of MakeMyTrip.com, found himself in a mess yesterday. In 2015, #BoycottSanpdeal trended after Aamir Khan‘s comment about surging intolerance in India.…
BJP files police complaint against Prashant Bhushan for ‘insulting’ Lord Krishna: A police complaint has been filed against Prashant Bhushan, a senior advocate and the co-founder of the new political party Swaraj Abhiyan, for his alleged ‘inflammatory tweets’ against ‘Lord Krishna.’ Delhi BJP spokesperson Tajinder Pal Singh Bagga filed the complaint at the Tilak Marg…
TIME FOR A FRANK DEBATE ON FREEDOM OF SPEECH AND NATIONALISM: Two events over the last few days, on opposite continents of the world, raise questions about the future of democracy in the US, the world’s most powerful, and India, the world’s most populous. On February 22, Srinivas Kunchibhotla was gunned down in Kansas, sharing…
Online Abuse And The Misappropriated Tool of “Free Speech”: That a “woman’s opinion is the miniskirt of the internet”, is an adage made almost legendary by Laurie Penny. However, miniskirts, or sartorial choices of any kind, are hardly the only things that provoke patriarchal mindsets to lash out in all their toxicity. So, a woman’s…
A senior Indian minister appeared Sunday to support police in a row over free speech that saw Amnesty slapped with sedition charges for an event about the disputed Kashmir region. Police in the southern city of Bangalore filed the initial charges last week following complaints that slogans on independence for the troubled region had been…
Mobile Internet services have been restored in the Kashmir valley after 17 days, reports Press Trust of India. Services were cut in over 10 districts on July 9 after security forces killed militant Burhan Wani which sparked widespread protests and violence. This is the longest period where mobile Internet was banned since September 2015 when serviceswere snapped for…
Miffed over Times Now Editor-in-Chief Arnab Goswami demanding strict action against “pseudo-secular and pro-Pakistan” journalists, NDTV consulting editor Barkha Dutt has written a strongly worded Facebook post criticising her former colleague for his “cowardly hypocrisy”. Dutt said she is ashamed to be from the same industry as Goswami who called for gagging of media.
No laughing matter Tanmay Bhatt is receiving a lot of hatred, at least some of which I imagine isn’t directly reaching him because others have slyly uploaded the Sachin vs Lata Civil War video on YouTube (to garner some views for their own channels!) and a lot of vile comments have been expressed there (“The…
Many of my Indian American friends, generally a well-informed group, are often surprised to learn that their resident Indian cousins don’t have the kind of freedom of speech they routinely enjoy in the United States. They assume quite reasonably that in India too, just like in the United States—both celebrated as exemplars of robust democracies—there…
Setting aside the penal defamation laws would lead to “anarchy” and no “orderly society” can have a situation where anybody can say anything against anybody, the Centre on Thursday told the Supreme Court, pitching for its retention in the statute book. “Does the freedom of speech and expression necessarily mean that one can say anything…