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Comment by leephillips | Hacker News Reader

This is an unsurprising extension into the electronic realm of India's notoriously weak support of free expression. They were the first country to ban the Satanic Verses; its import, I believe, is still illegal there. Citizens are routinely persecuted under laws that literally prohibit hurting people's religious feelings (recently invoked against a researcher who exposed another fake Catholic miracle[0]). India is the most prominent example of a country with plenty of voting but no democracy.

[0] http://blog.newhumanist.org.uk/2012/07/sanal-edamarukus-situ...

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> Citizens are routinely persecuted under laws that literally prohibit hurting people's religious feelings

It would be interesting to hear from Indians on these issues. I'm not a citizen nor do I live there, but religious conflict often has cost many lives in India. For example, there were the 2002 religious riots in Gujarat which made Modi, now Prime Minister of the country, so controversial; 1,000-2,000 people died and there were brutal gang rapes, people being burnt alive and other horrors. Going back to the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947, up to a million people died and many millions were displaced.

In Germany there are laws against free expression of Nazi ideas. Perhaps in India it is appropriate to minimize religious conflict. I don't know enough to offer an opinion but it's a very serious consideration.

Expressing Nazi ideas is prohibited in Germany because of what following Nazi ideas can lead to, not just to avoid conflict.

If you forbid peoples' expression in the name of avoiding conflict then you simply allow the ideas of the most bloodthirsty, conflict-minded group to dominate, as this group is the group most likely to get offended, and hence suppressing any ideas that offend this group necessarily leaves this group's ideas unchallenged.

To whoever downvoted me, was it in objection to my implied description as bloodthirsty of the group behind the religious riots in which "1,000-2,000 people died and there were brutal gang rapes, people being burnt alive and other horrors"? If so, I'd be interested to hear by what standards such behaviour could be considered anything other than bloodthirsty and conflict-minded.

>>Expressing Nazi ideas is prohibited in Germany because of what following Nazi ideas can lead to, not just to avoid conflict.

Yes. Expressing Nazi ideas can lead to violence, extremism, racial and religious discrimination, anti-democratic activity among other things. That's pretty much what the OP said, and is also the original motivation behind India's censorship laws. I am of the opinion that the case for censorship is more justified in India than in Germany. As the Gujarat 2002 riots and Assam 2012 riots (where Indian govt. temporarily throttled sms traffic to prevent spread of rumours) have pretty much proven - tactless media coverage or the spreading of rumours during tense situations could result in the deaths of thousands.

Of course whether those laws are being abused (in ways including the one you described) is a whole nother question.

>Expressing Nazi ideas can lead to violence, extremism, racial and religious discrimination, anti-democratic activity among other things.

I didn't say Nazi ideas were banned because of this, I said they were banned because of what _following_ them can lead to. For contrast, compare an idea like "group X treats women like second-class citizen". Following this idea does no harm, it doesn't even do anything, as it's not a prescription that can be followed, it's just a statement. Expressing it could however still lead to a violence if group X is aggressive and conflict-minded. If expressing this idea is banned, then public discussion of the poor treatment of women by group x would be banned, and there wouldn't be any pressure for group x to improve its treatment of them.

As much as I hate it, I think in the case of India, preventing religious conflicts is best compared to defending free speech. The amount of police force needed to protect people who in the name of free speech offend religious sentiments and the community that gets affected because of the speech would be prohibitive. Plus, Indians are in general too sensitive about religion in general though that is slowly fading away. We need more success stories of satellite launches and corruption free bureaucracy to start believing in science, democracy, judiciary more than religion. Even now, there are different family laws based on what religion a person is hailing from. This is done so people can still apply their religious morality when it comes to family matters. For many western folks, this can be confusing. I for one have long wanted a uniform civil code in India. When I was raised, I was not told about the indian judicial system and what it means to break country's laws. I was taught about not breaking the hindu code of law. So religion is part of pretty much everyone's upbringing. I know very few strong atheist Indians. (I am transforming from being a theist to an agnostic.) With religion and God, there seems to be a constant hope. With other things, especially in India, people do not have that hope. As far as the modi example goes, supreme court of India did not find Modi guilty. So as per the country's laws, he is allowed to contest elections. He did so and won. People voted for him because he gave them a hope of development. He has been elected chief minister thrice in the state of Gujarat even winning elections after the riots. There is also a number's game here. 80% of Indians are Hindus and only 15% are muslims. The media coverage often cited the burning of Hindu pilgrims in train as the starting point of the riots which probably swayed the voters. What happened in Gujarat is completely wrong but I'd say it happened because some religious fanatics decided to throw propaganda speeches (in the name of exercising free speech) worsening the problem.

I do believe however there is in general liberty to free speech as long as it doesn't involve religious flame wars or speeches filled with national hate (You may want to read up on arrests of pro-LTTE speakers) . The isolated examples quoted in the original article can be argued case by case and as far as I know convictions have not been obtained. So the law is taking it's course. The very act of arresting them is violating civil liberties but there is no strong organization like the ACLU in India (there is PUCL but it's pretty dormant) to help citizens. And common people do not want to spend the money on lawyers and courts. So police force will continue to abuse their powers because no one keeps them in check. I've personally faced police excesses and it was more of a taboo to explain it to your family that you were picked up for questioning. In India, the very act of you being questioned by police is seen as a character issue.

Long story short, when I see first world struggling with civil liberties (I live in USA now), I do not expect India to do better. It is also unfair to compare a much younger democracy with an older democracy that still hasn't figured out civil liberties in digital age completely. I also do not expect India to lead the world in terms of civil liberties in next 20 years (either digital or regular). I do hope the remaining humanity in Indians don't vanish. Otherwise, we'd implode.

I think you're confusing "democracy" with "secular humanism." India is a deeply conservative, religious place. The people voting don't have any problems with laws that prohibit hurting peoples' religious feelings.

Westerners don't understand that Eastern societies place far greater emphasis on respecting existing social norms/ structures and the idea of "order" .

This is there even in the Indian Constitution. The govt. is allowed to impose restrictions on fundamental rights in order to maintain order and harmony. First Amendment absolutism is totally out of the question in the Indian context.

Even if I could understand disagreeing with "first ammendment absolutism", there are few words that scare me as much as "harmony" when uttered as the reason behind "actions to maintain order".

No, we understand it. It doesn't mean it's a good thing to do, or that we agree with it and won't criticise it.

Also, I am from the East though I grew up in the West, and the attempt to deflect criticism just on the basis of "it's a different society" is disgusting, a hindrance to progress, and frankly quite racist. There is an ongoing campaign in India against the practice of dowry, I guess you also want to argue "Westerners don't understand that India just traditionally has dowry"??

I was with you until you started talking about dowry, proving once and for all (literally, for everyone who reads your comment) that you have no clue about India.

There is hardly any problem related to dowry. Come, have a look. 'Dowry' exists in media which consists of third grade students turned women-right activists.

For mathematically minded people, I will just quote recent supreme court judgment about the reality of dowry and dowry harassment lawsuit (498(a) IPC):

"The simplest way to harass is to get the husband and his relatives arrested under this provision. In a quite number of cases, bed-ridden grand-fathers and grand-mothers of the husbands, their sisters living abroad for decades are arrested. "Crime in India 2012 Statistics" published by National Crime Records Bureau, Ministry of Home Affairs shows arrest of 1,97,762 persons all over India during the year 2012 for offence under Section 498-A of the IPC, 9.4% more than the year 2011. Nearly a quarter of those arrested under this provision in 2012 were women i.e. 47,951 which depicts that mothers and sisters of the husbands were liberally included in their arrest net. Its share is 6% out of the total persons arrested under the crimes committed under Indian Penal Code. It accounts for 4.5% of total crimes committed under different sections of penal code, more than any other crimes excepting theft and hurt. The rate of charge-sheeting in cases under Section 498A, IPC is as high as 93.6%, while the conviction rate is only 15%, which is lowest across all heads. As many as 3,72,706 cases are pending trial of which on current estimate, nearly 3,17,000 are likely to result in acquittal."

I suppose 85% acquittal rate is just collateral damage, except that dowry was exactly how women used to get their parental property rights in India! But that is too Indian for Indians educated in western schools. So instead of codifying dowry as mandatory to protect women's rights from being infringed by her family, feminists would rather use misandry and enable women to vent their frustration on her husband. So we got ridiculous laws like dowry harassment lawsuit (1983) and dowry prohibition lawsuit, and then they realized that husbands demanding dowry is actually a rarity and reality is not at all as media would like to have use believe. So finally they passed equal property rights for women in 2005.

Bit by bit, you know. There is a reason why villages in India give an impression of being lawless.

Step outside your well. The issues you talk about are very much there in every arranged marriage (which is almost 100% of all marriages in India), they just exist differently.

I am not sure what issues you are talking about. I was talking about how external type of education (western in this case), in general, and specially when conducted over generations, completely changes our moral compass and understanding, by using specific example of dowry.

Do you have any clue about India? You just pasted a long paragraph from one source and gave no explanation of how it backs up your point. What even is your point? You seem to think that dowry harassment lawsuits are all there is to dowry.

I don't get it. If you think supreme court judgement is 'one source' then you cannot be argued with. And complaining about 'long paragraph'... hmm... I think you are just angry and without argument.

Regarding second paragraph, the citation is not handy right now, but this is what Indian feminists actually write. You know, the ones actually involved in drafting government policies. There was a similar article by NCW I read around 3 months ago. You can also talk to the head of http://samajsevasamithy.org/ regarding it (I volunteer there).

No, you cannot make an empty argument and then say I have no argument. Quoting the supreme court randomly, does not argue anything. You fail to explain why the supreme court's quote is relevant to anything you said, or anything I said for that matter. You will need to back up your assertions about "Indian feminists" with actual real data; otherwise it is just an inappropriate generalisation.

The supreme court judgement is not random, it is a judgement from SUPREME COURT which proves that even the most respected institution of India knows that there is hardly any problem of dowry. If, instead, I would have just said that, then you would have given me citations from news articles showing 'how bad the problem in dowry is', and then I would have pasted this same judgement to show you the "real data". I posted it to cut short that argument. There is obviously a difference between our perception of self-infallibility and my attempt to cut short that argument has failed. So why don't you show me some "real data" to prove that dowry is a major problem in India against which there is an 'ongoing campaign', because I have shown you already that there is a 'ongoing campaign' in India to match reality with fictional bullshit (that most probably you learned about India when you were a kid) by curbing down the abuse of the exactly same rhetorical argument you presented in your original post. Seriously man, Dowry Prohibition Act was passed in 1969. You are 50 years late to the party. Now we are passing laws to water it down.

Regarding the second paragraph, that whole argument comes from Madhu Kishwar but because I don't have the exact url I will leave it at that.

As per the effects of feminist media upon Indian villages (where, as Gandhi said, real India lives), I would ask you to go through these: 1. http://fathersforlife.org/pizzey/DV_is_not_a_gender_issue.ht... 2. http://www.odsg.org/Said_Edward%281977%29_Orientalism.pdf 3. http://www.rediff.com/news/special/ls-election-madhu-kishwar...

Thanks for the more clear explanation. However, just because a law is abused by some women, does not mean "there is hardly any problem of dowry" - you are making a logical jump here. Also, the supreme court isn't important here; they're just quoting statistics from the National Crime Records Bureau. (Does 1,97,762 mean 197k or are we a missing a number here?) Last time I heard there were about 9k dowry-related deaths (also from the NCRB); you'd expect the incidence of non-fatal violence would be higher, but I don't know numbers for that. Regarding the "ongoing campaign" I saw things a while back, possibly it was "Say No To Dowry", and there are others just from a quick web search. I am not a researcher in this area, and perhaps western media is more biased around this topic. But you're not making any good arguments against it.

Regarding your links about feminism, [1] is not relevant to India, [2] is you being very lazy - I'm not going to read through 400 pages just to entertain your whims, you will need to quote specific extracts from it, and [3] is fairly neutral regarding feminists.

You also seem to getting offended personally that I am pointing out problems with your country. I don't know what to do, other than point out that this reaction is not rational, and that I don't mean personal offence.

No problem. India is a shit country and if it were possible for me to give up my citizenship I would have done it without second thought. I have no issues with people pointing out problems, but problems of India are not reported in news unless they happen to be about cultural differences. [2] is not an argument, it is just to give you a direction if you want to find out real structural problems in all colonized countries and the sheer depth of it all. Read it at your own leisure. Orientalism by E. Said is phenomenal book that changed sociology studies. It is a very good read and even first 50-60 pages are enough to make you think.

Regarding dowry related death, any death of wife within 7 years of marriage is reported as dowry related death. Why? So police-lawyer-NCW nexus can make money out of it by harassing husband. A lot of times even women's family jumps in to make money. That is the level of discrimination women face. For example, the dowry harassment lawsuit (498a IPC) is non-cognizable, which means once filed, it cannot be taken back. Then it is Husband vs. The State. The moment a death occurs police and lawyers will convince family members to file 498a. Then they can simply use it to extort lakhs. My friend himself paid 10 lakhs. Is NCW interested in that data? No. It actively hides the real data, instead relying on vague statistics like 'how many dowry related deaths have been reported to police' and not 'how many dowry related deaths actually happened'. And why not? NCW is run by politicians and wives of corrupt IPS officers.

There's two different arguments here.

'leephilips said: "India is the most prominent example of a country with plenty of voting but no democracy."

You said: "It doesn't mean it's a good thing to do, or that we agree with it and won't criticise it."

A perfectly well-functioning democratic society can reach conclusions that are worthy of criticism. People have a habit of blaming the process for grievances they have with the substantive outcomes of the process.

E.g. people on Hacker News rant about how democracy in the U.S. must not be functioning because the drug war still rages on. The drug war is, in my opinion, a policy worthy of criticism. Yet, it's undeniable that it enjoys popular support. It was only this year that marijuana legalization managed to carry a (slim) majority of registered voters. As recently as 10-15 years ago, there was a 2:1 consensus against even legalization of marijuana--forget about ending the drug war entirely.

It's easy to blame the process for results you don't like. It's harder to admit that the process is fine, you just don't like what people do with their right to self-determination.

I realize I didn't provide much to take hold of, but this is what I meant by the line that you quoted:

By "democracy" I have in mind what Americans and Western Europeans mean by democracy, which is decidedly not a simple tyranny of the majority enacted through voting. Democracy in any meaningful sense has some means of self regulation that preserves certain rights and perpetuates self-determination for future generations.

I'm not blaming the process. The U.S. still has a serviceable democracy despite the drug war and all the other examples of bad public policy that are desired by the people. Our democracy has even survived the violation of parts of the constitution that makes it possible. My point was that no democracy can exist in any meaningful sense in a society that has criminalized the discussion of ideas and the expression of opinions. Once that line has been crossed it is not a matter of undesirable public policy, but of democracy eating itself. Surely you agree that there can be no democracy if you're not allowed to talk about how people should vote.

India has become a place where you can be jailed for exposing the physical cause of a weeping statue because you've hurt the feelings of the Catholics who want to believe that it's a miracle. I don't believe democracy can exist under such conditions, but I hope things change soon for this great nation.

We may be arguing semantics at this point, but to me philosopher kings sitting in judgment of the popular will exemplifies less democracy, not more.

Came here to say exactly this.

There are two parts to this as I see it with some bit of overlap.

1. A hard core group (could be religious, person centric (e.g., Mahatma Gandhi)) that act as custodians of "sentiments" of larger population. They act with various degrees of violence if they believe that the sentiments have been hurt [1], [2]. The police force itself generally sides with the mob and they cite oft repeated phrase of "natural reaction by the crowd" as a reason for avoiding taking action.

2. Freedom of expression that's curtailed by law and codified in law books.

For me #2 above is far more serious issue. Various courts routinely invoke this law, which is amazingly ill-defined to start with, to suppress any kind of dissent. I can't cite hard data here but in my life time I can clearly see an uptrend in such cases. There's also a harsher (some say draconian) law around sedition. Even if you are a mere sympathizer with a banned group then you will be treated as an enemy of the state; there's no soft middle ground here and you are treated as a militant [3].

Shiny GDP and development notwithstanding India is fast moving towards dictatorship which is really unfortunate as right to dissent is the core of a democratic society.

[1]: http://indianexpress.com/article/india/politics/muslim-techi...

[2]: http://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/kerala-police-may-b...

[3]: http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-others/du-profe...

>India is the most prominent example of a country with plenty of voting but no democracy.

"Democracy" doesn't mean "everything is fair". Democracy is just larger groups having absolute power over smaller groups.

There is absolutely no guarantee that the larger group isn't going to oppress the smaller one. This is why constitutional democracies (where the power of the majority is strictly limited) are a popular compromise.

What you describe is not democracy but tyranny of majority. To curtail it minorities are given extra rights. The ban has to do with hurting religious sentiments of minorities.

Democracy sometimes requires sacrificing a privilege for public benefit. India has a very diverse culture (I would say no other country in world has such a diverse demographic) and co-existence can be uneasy. Non-Indians may not understand the compromises one has to make, to coexist harmoniously.

> India is the most prominent example of a country with plenty of voting but no democracy.

Second you on that one! I lived in various parts of rural India for a little over 12 years, and the deeper I went, the more I saw people there actively voting in droves. And the harder their life and generally poor state of affairs!

sadly democracy in India only has the voting part implemented fairly well. It's a monarch until the next election. Even the voting is neck deep in corruption [1]

[1] http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/tamil-nadu/cash-for-vo...

What do you mean its a monarch until next election. Head of state is often elected for the term period. Also it maybe one of the cases reported, it doesn't imply voting is entirely corrupt.

Will the downvoter exercise his freedom of expression to tell me what is wrong with my comment above.

My guess is that he meant "dictatorship" rather than "monarchy". You took umbrage with his mistake rather than forgiving that and recognizing his intent, which is that the PM role in India has way too much power.

Indian voters are suffering from https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome

I think those in the West could argue that the poorest in their countries often vote against their personal interests. Not quite the same hardships, but an example of how easily people can be convinced to vote against what might serve them best.

Democracy must go beyond elections: Kapil Sibal, Former Law Minister in India

http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2013-12-07/news...

I seriously believe we are today reaping the fruits of many of the fruits of feeble defense given to Salman Rushdie following that episode. A murder was commissioned by a head of state and the response was to perhaps consider that some people might be theologically offended by this work of art by a soft spoken man.

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