India Wants to Exhibit Insulting Content From the Websites

India dislikes the exhibition of insulting content on websites

Government officials are upset about Web pages that are insulting to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, ruling Congress party leader Sonia Gandhi and major religious figures. Kapil Sibal, India’s telecommunications minister, said he spoke repeatedly with officials from major Internet companies over the past three months and asked them to come up with a voluntary framework to keep offensive material off the Internet.

India’s top telecommunications official mentioned that Facebook and Google have ignored his demands to screen derogatory material from their sites, so the government would have to act on its own. Indian media reports said that during the meeting Monday, Sibal specifically told officials from Google, Facebook, Yahoo and Microsoft about posts that were insulting to Singh, Gandhi and religious leaders.

“This is a matter of great concern to us. We have to take care of the sensibility of our people,” he said. Facebook said in a statement Tuesday it would remove content that “is hateful, threatening, incites violence or contains nudity.”

“We are seeking their cooperation, and if somebody is not willing to cooperate on incendiary material like this, it is the duty of government to think of steps that we need to take,” he said. “We don’t want to interfere in freedom of the press, but this kind of material should not be allowed.”

Facebook has three pages titled “I hate Sonia Gandhi,” two titled “We hate Sonia Gandhi,” and one titled “Manmohan Singh is a puppet of Sonia Gandhi.” India has more than 25 million Facebook users.

Before his news conference Tuesday, Sibal showed reporters Web illustrations showing Singh and Gandhi in compromising positions as well as a site showing pigs running through Islam’s holy city of Mecca, a clear insult to Muslims.

Sibal said the Internet companies had told him that they were applying U.S. standards to their sites, and he objected, saying that they needed to be sensitive to Indian sensibilities.

Rajesh Chharia, president of the Internet Service Providers Association of India, said Internet companies need to be mindful of concerns over national security and national sensitivities.

“I am not favoring censorship — self-regulation is the best censorship available to our system,” he said. “We should not do anything which should harm the peace of the country.”