If the government actually bans complete access to all of blogspot or other blogging sites, it will be an unprecedented act. We will lose our hold on one of the most important reasons why we are proud of India, and which can enable us to criticise censure in other countries. One of my American friends asked me two days ago, when I was aware of the government's planned action only a rumour, whether this fact was true. I confidently told him that I am sure that something like this could never happen.

Voila! Today, I ask a couple of my friends in India, and none of them can access my blog. Frankly, this is quite shocking for me, because as I said before, no matter how much freedom of speech is trampled under the feet of fanatic fundamentalists and bigots who take out on the streets the moment someone makes a comment about a national matter, I am not aware of any incident where the government itself has ordered a large scale suppression of this right in any way. I also hope that the government does not exploit the fear of terrorism and conflict as an excuse to indulge in this, an action that has ample precedent in history, most recently in the US.
In recent years, many of us have lamented the loss of freedom of speech by informal threats and extreme criticism which makes anyone automatically wary of speaking out for or against any national matter, from sex in cinema to Naramada andolan. Is this government action simply a transition to making this paradigm a formal one? It still would be outrageous, and the day would go down as a black day in our recent history.

From today onwards, let me keep my mouth shut about the curtailment of civil liberties in Pakistan and China, which I frequently used to aggressively quote, to make a point about Indian democracy.