The stand off between the Indian government and Twitter is escalating with the country bringing in new laws to oversee online speech. The Ministry of Electronics
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With China behind its Great Firewall, India is poised to become the world’s largest free internet market. The global web is already affecting the life of the country in a number of positive and negative ways – some of which were described in Ravi Agarwal’s book “India Connected” – and politics is no exception. In one of my past articles for The Diplomat, I showed how the country’s ruling party, the BJP, has become internet-savvy. The virtual performance of BJP members is being reviewed by the leadership in a number of ways, such as whether they have accounts in social media (Twitter, Facebook), how much they interact with netizens, or how often they post information on government programs. Perhaps we could give a twist to how we understand “post-politics” (a term I am not a fan of): let us say it means the politics of posting, the skill of winning over the internet, without which a party will find it much harder to win elections.
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The decision of key U.S. social media platforms to ban outgoing President Donald Trump has caused much consternation among the Indian right-wing and supporters of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Following Facebook’s decision to indefinitely ban Trump from its platform, and Twitter’s first temporary, and then permanent, suspension of @realDonaldTrump, key pro-BJP voices have spoken out against it, and in the process, revealed their worry that Facebook and Twitter might crack down on them at some point in the near future.
On January 9, Amit Malviya, the head of BJP’s information and technology department, tweeted about the two social media giants’ decision to suspend Trump’s account: “Deplatforming Donald Trump, a sitting US president, sets a dangerous precedent. It has less to do with his views and more to do with intolerance for a differing point. Ironically, those who claim to champion free speech are celebrating. Big tech firms are now the new o