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Comment by techaddict009 | Hacker News Reader

Well this was done as a precautionary move so that people stop spreading rumours and videos of affected areas.

Also to stop mobs to communicate in mass with each other.

Such "precautionary" moves are putting the cart before the horse; they value the state over the freedoms of the people. They are incompatible with any honest representative government.

Well I am from the effected area. Believe it or not this move has surely helped to maintain peace. No doubt it has effected many peoples work. But this was one of quickest way to control mass communication. Plus the ban is on 2G/3G & SMS on mobile network not on broad band or usual wired network.

On wired network probably only fb & whatsapp are banned.

So did they declare martial law?

Edit: Yes[0]

[0] http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/08/indian-army-deployed-r...

what does that mean?

It means military rule.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martial_law

Sometimes, when the fit hits the shan, governments must act decisively to protect the public interest. So they call a timeout on civil society. Not quite state of war, but heading that way. But when that's not explicit, it becomes hard to tell whether or not one is living in a police state.

This is incorrect: Deploying the RAF to control a situation is not the same as declaring Martial Law.

That would require declaring an Emergency AFAIK.

OK, thanks.

I say this as an Indian and with sadness: The notion and importance of free speech is at worst alien and at best a concept with little or no respect in India. If you exercise your right to free speech (you can only do so when you indulge in speech not welcome by anyone who holds influence) you seriously risk physical harm. This is the reason you dont have Jon Stewart show in India, wont have in the near future.

If someone drops his pants, or more accurately does something much worse (multi-homicide level worse) and claims "I did because BTNM said so", no one will seriously question his/her judgement or responsibility of listening to BTNM but will fall over themselves in their eagerness to blame BTNM exclusively and put a blanket ban on anything that is deemed unpopular by the people who have influence: think of the women and children that may be harmed.

I am sick and tired of waiting for us to behave like adults and treat people like adults with the full set of responsibilities that comes with it. But no, we want to be treated like kids incapable of taking responsibility of our own actions and elect such people to high places.

I expect this to be downvoted if there is a large Indian audience hanging out here. This is definitely a minority view here, going by multiple conversations I have had on this topic.

Start with small insults. But be careful not to create hidden tension. And it will take years.

You are correct, however the problem is with the large % of illiteracy/poor education. I hope things will improve once the society is better educated.

I wish I could bury it under that rug, but such views are held quite strongly by the apparently educated and "literate" class. Those who do not hold on to such beliefs are typically labelled "communist", "unpatriotic" or some such.

My experience is on the contrary. I have seen people being branded right wing extremists just for having a different point of view. So I think both sides are guilty of this crime.

BTNM? I've never heard this abbreviation. Could you expand it :)

Just happened to be near my thumb and index finger :)

India has decided over the years, for better or for worse, that keeping the nation together is more important to them than freedom of speech. This is why the film censorship board is so strong here compared to most other democracies, for instance.

I'm an American expat living in India and it's still quite alien to me after a few years. The government really can tell you to stop saying something because it offends someone else. They can do that because the alternative is that hundreds or even thousands of people die.

My opinion on that decision isn't terribly important because I'm not Indian; it's not my decision to make. It's a very deliberate compromise that the Indian people have found over the decades.

So they decided to sign over people's future to a bunch of caste elders who demand that you walk on eggshells to preserve some construct with colonial boundaries?

What does colonial boundaries have to do with caste elders or anything related to this topic?

It most certainly has to do with who freedom of speech is being sacrificed for and why?

I'm seeing very similar wording all over the place, although most accounts posting are new and yours isn't.

Bro if you need any verification from me let me know. I am from effected area. I have seen 3 bus stands burning in front of my eyes. Reached home with difficulty. No one stopped any one from protesting but destroying public property is not a way to protest.

This guys had gone highly out of control. Banning their communication was one of the way to control them. Atleast I feel so. I am from affected area.

If you want I can send you some photos I took from my mob while going home shivering.

...and the way to fix it, the only effective intervention, the only conceivable intervention is to ban / censor mobile communication, to take away the ability of all people in the area from communicating over mobile. Fair enough, seems the obvious and logical thing to do. Government caught in the noble act of governance.

They havent banned mobile calls. They have just blocked mobile internet for 24 hours.

No doubt that should have been last option. But yes they did it at last. People started pelting stones on Army. So even Army couldnt control mob via flag march or any such thing.

What, the Army doesn't have teargas or rubber bullets?

Or real ones, for that matter (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashimpura_massacre)

That sounds terrifying. You have my sympathies. Could there be a better way, though? Some way to calm the mobs without silencing everyone else? In what way are the mobs using mobile Internet that requires shutting it down?

I hope order and safety are restored quickly, and in a judicious and democratic way. All the best from here in the US.

Another Indian here (Currently living in the US). Unfortunately, whatsapp rumors have become a huge cause of concern in recent times.

"Forwarded messages" on whatsapp is an extremely common practice and a lot of times, false videos/news start trending which were originally sourced specifically to incite people.

There have been instances where I have had to explain my relatives to not worry about the forwarded message they got showing some disturbing images (because in reality, they were taken from the net from some war in a distant part of the world).

I am a huge proponent of Free speech but in those very tense moments in parts of the country, disrupting / stopping these false rumors from spreading can result in saving lives.

Is there a trusted source for verifying or refuting rumors, like a newspaper or TV channel, that could be promoted instead?

Yes, certainly. In fact the media is pretty active and usually reliable. They also help by letting people know to "Stop believing in rumors and stay calm". But I think the problem here is similar to that of older, non-tech savvy generation falling victims to Nigeriam mail scams. The thing in India is, a vast majority of the new mobile net users in India (majority belonging to lower income category) have been introduced to the internet very recently and hence are bad at judging what's spam and what's not.

So imagine an area which is already tense and then the local youth get forwarded messages with an Image (pulled from the internet) of a burnt body and then some poorly edited text at the bottom saying "This is what xyz community did to our brothers. We have to stand up to this!". That's when things go terribly wrong. Please note that this is just an example and that is definitely not what happened here in Gujarat this time, but it has occured a few times in the recent past (Muzaffarnagar riots) and so the government takes no chances.

But yes, I agree there has to be a better solution than just an outright disruption in services.

Instead of asking questions, why don't you come up with some solutions. You see, reasoning doesn't quite work well with mobs. It is good that the government resorted to cutting the communications rather than resorting to violence.

Why? I'm genuinely interested in this. If army opened fire and say 1000 people died, are Patels all over India going to go burn Army cantts?

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