Government Censorship Intensifies Ahead of Indian Elections

India, the world’s largest democracy, prepares to kick off its election season in just a matter of weeks. But activists and experts worry that the government is cracking down on platforms and internet service providers to silence critical voices and tighten its grip on the information ecosystem.

Indian journalist Raqib Hameed Naik, who founded the website Hindutva Watch, was notified by X, previously Twitter, on January 16 that the Indian Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) had ordered the account to be blocked. People in India are complaining that they are unable to reach the Hindutva Watch Twitter, according to anxious messages Naik has received.

Hindutva Watch and its companion website, the India Hate Lab, monitor instances of violence motivated by religion carried out by adherents of the nation’s right-wing administration, led by the Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Under Modi, there was a decrease in press freedom, which made it harder for journalists to write critically on the administration and how its policies affected the nation’s minorities. Hindutva Watch’s information might be more important than ever in the run-up to elections, when Naik forecasts a “surge in hate crimes.”

Naik claims that over a period of over two years, the Indian government has made multiple attempts to get the content of Hindutva Watch taken from X, citing a breach of India’s IT Act. According to Naik, “we received 26 legal requests to remove various posts from the Indian government and various law enforcement agencies, mostly from the state police under BJP rule.”

However, this was the first time the government had targeted the account as a whole, and when asked what particular regulations Hindutva Watch had broken, the MeitY remained silent.

According to Kian Vesteinsson, senior research analyst at Freedom House, “people are better able to comprehend the stakes of the current election thanks to independent researchers and civil society organizations like Hindutva Watch.” “India Hate Lab’s and Hindutva Watch’s online content is censored, depriving Indian voters of crucial information that could have influenced their opinion of the election.”

Naik and other concerned parties believe that the blockage of Hindutva Watch and India Hate Lab is just another step in the government’s attempt to maintain control over the country’s media space as it devolves more and more toward dictatorship.

The BJP and its allies, led by Modi, came to power on a platform of Hindu nationalism, inciting terror among the nation’s Muslim minority. Modi dedicated the new Ram Mandir temple, which was erected on the site of the Babri Masjid, a mosque that was razed in 1992 by a mob sponsored by the BJP, just days before Hindutva Watch was outlawed nationwide. Over 2,000 people lost their lives in the riots that followed, and the location has been a source of conflict for more than 30 years. Modi’s leadership has also seen an increased crackdowns on critics—including journalists, activists, academics, and other lawmakers, in addition to platforms themselves.

According to Raman Jit Singh Chima, senior international counsel and Asia Pacific policy director at Access Now, “there’s been a dramatic uptick in the amount of blocking orders being sent by the federal government, to tech platforms and telecom companies, since 2020 and 2021 in particular.” He claims that whereas blocking orders were frequently issued in the past during large-scale demonstrations or civil upheaval, the government has since extended and is now clamping down on anything that “it perceives to damage the country’s reputation globally.”

With almost 79,000 followers on X and almost daily updates on riots, violence, and BJP leaders using anti-Muslim remarks, Hindutva Watch doesn’t do much to improve the party’s standing. A joint statement issued during Modi’s US visit in June 2023 declared that the incidents covered by Hindutva Watch also contradict the image of a US ally dedicated to “freedom, democracy, human rights, inclusion, pluralism, and equal opportunities for all citizens.”

Furthermore, Chima asserts that this is a crucial time to be in charge of the media ecosystem because it is just before India’s official election season begins. It will be more challenging for executive branch officials to impose blocking orders once the elections get underway without possibly breaking the nation’s electoral code.

The government does not want these individuals to be on the internet, so we are concerned about the message they are attempting to send to IT platforms, he says. “The government will use these kinds of tools to send as many messages as possible between now and the end of February.”

The laws surrounding these blocking orders, according to Mishi Choudhary, a lawyer and general counsel at Virtu as well as a former legal director at the Software Freedom Law Center, are particularly pernicious because the government is not required to specify which specific websites, accounts, or content are harmful or in violation, making it challenging for users, platforms, or ISPs to fight back.

“They’re left in the dark to figure out what’s really happening,” she says. And though they’re meant to be issued through the courts, websites or users who are blocked are “never given a hearing.”

“Wholly issued by executive branch officials are the orders. Independent checks do not exist,” Chima claims. Civil workers make the decisions on whether or not to carry out the directives, and they also assess their own orders afterwards. The government claims that blocking orders are confidential, so you aren’t even able to obtain copies of the data on the orders themselves.

Furthermore, it can be difficult, if not impossible, for platforms to withstand these takedown orders in a nation with such a huge population; India is X’s third-largest market, with almost 30 million users. MeitY blocked hundreds of X users on Twitter after thousands of farmers protested new agriculture policies in 2021. The platform contested a number of the orders in court, claiming that numerous blocking orders did not adhere to the government’s stated requirements for being removed. However, the case was dropped in July 2023, and the corporation was fined $61,000 for failing to carry out the takedowns quickly enough.

Additionally, India has regulations that many experts regard to as “hostage taking laws,” requiring platforms to designate a local legal representative who may be held accountable or even detained should the platform disobey government directives. It is now much more difficult to determine what is truly going on at X since Elon Musk fired most of the policy, trust, and safety staff that typically worked with civil society organizations like Hindutva Watch or Access Now to notify them of blocking orders after taking over the company in October 2022.

“My organization and others could ring up someone at Twitter, a public policy specialist, or someone else to say, ‘Can you give us some more information?’ before Musk took control. Why is this happening? “Do you think we can address it?” asks Choudhary. Additionally, we would have access to additional data. Since no one is present, that no longer occurs.

An inquiry for comment from X was not answered.

In addition to depriving the general public in India of knowledge on politically motivated sectarian and religious violence, Naik claims that taking down Hindutva Watch and India Hate Lab also makes it more difficult for law enforcement to look into these crimes. He states, “We’ve had requests from local police to use some of our documentation to look into violent crimes.”

Chima expresses concern that the government might be using the possibility of more regulations in the lead-up to elections “as a signal to tech companies saying, ‘Don’t push back when we ask you to take down stuff during this period,'” even though he is unsure of the exact reason Hindutva Watch was blocked at this time.

It will only get worse as the elections draw nearer, according to Naik.