As part of a generation that has NOT experienced first-hand censorship
of the mass media (the last time this happened was during Emergency in
1975) this 'blogger block' has come as a deep shock to all of us.
Living in India prepares you for some of the toughest realities that
LIFE could throw your way but freedom to say what you want has been
largely a sacred cow, especially since the trauma of Emergency. I am
glad that the blogger community is not taking things lying down. The
kind of fevered debate and discussion this unfortunate ban (some say
oversight) has generated is heartening and proves many assumptions
(especially those of non-bloggers and certain high priests of the
mainstream media) wrong. The biggest and nastiest of which is that
BLOGISTAN (yes it's a subcontinent thing!) is a space for
self-indulgent thumb-twiddlers and wannabe opinion-makers.
It has also proved that Blogistan is a live, throbbing and real
community of people like any other, anywhere else in the world.
And the beauty of their existence is that they hang somewhere between
continents, time-zones and governments defying both the realities of
time and space. Someone blogs/replies/links to someone else's post
while that someone else is in the middle of a good night's slumber or
whatever else the night's meant for. And these connections spread from
one to another to another to yet another. Becoming a web of ideas,
emotions, feelings. All shared and exchanged in good faith.
This ban is stupid and ugly because it aims at banning something as
sacred as human connectivity.
