Saturday, July 22, 2006

Being Blogger

Although I was compelled to subside my tempatation to visit my blog over the days for want of time and mindset to even think about a lot of things happening around me, to say the least, detached temporarily from my blog, it had not frustrated me as much as the news of blogs being blocked came.Not until friends started asking me as to why blogs were not being accessible did I realise and research on the cause for blogs getting blocked. Thanks to my not-reading-newspapers-habit that I have developed, of late! All said and done, I too believe that in the name of Freedom of Speech, anything under the Sun cannot be allowed to be expressed, for the welfare of the nation, rather to the benefit of the masses. Government, supposed to think sensibly, does have the rights to limit the rights of the people at certain circumstances to meet the security and communal stability in a complexly constituted country like India. But, being a massive body that it is, it can't afford to think and act this petty! The act of blocking blogs would to what extent serve the purpose is beyond my imagination! If not blogs, rather blogs only on blogspot, there are other means to express oneself, which possibly according to the government has the potential to invigourate the communal violences. Can curbing one from posting a blog stop all this! If the Government is incapable of handling the physical disturbances happening around, I wonder how it can fight the mental turbulences happening in the minds of people! That's exactly what it attempted to do.
Amidst all this, what seemed like a silver lining was the potential that blogosphere and bloggers had, to challenge and compel the Government to revisit the constitution to recollect the basics of rights and duties and how rightly they have to be executed.
It came as a surpise that Indian bloggers are such a significant group, both in numbers and strength. More often than not, my blog had been a place only for miscellaneous jottings, but I have visited blogs dedicated for note-worthy issues and help in various fields. It just shocked me that they were getting blocked too! Just recently , I had read about a Police station in Chitradurga ( A demographically large, but comparatively socially backward district in Karnataka) had maintained a blog to keep in close touch with the public. I have no words to express the pride I had in knowing that a district which has yet to go a long way had become so tech-savvy. Pride being two-folds for the reason that my parents are native of that place and hence, although was born and brought up outside of it, I find my roots there. Here, blog was maintained to improve security, Isn't it?
Nevertheless, the crisis that had popped up for a while,only helped in making us understand the role bloggers can play. If they were unfortunately thought of as being able to shake the communal stability of India, (while they actually shook the Government!!) they indeed have an audience to cater to! Yes, blogging should go on and in the interest of not only the nation, but the world, one should morally adhere to certain boundaries without being compelled to.
Hail Bloggers!

3 comments:

HaRi pRaSaD said...

:) Welcome back after the hiatus!

Ya, it was sheer stupidity on the part of government to block all the blogs.It would be better had it somehow identified the blogs that were spreading hate and blocked them alone.
But this in a way has shown the influence blogs have on the society.Just because a section of bloggers used this wonderful media in unscrupulous ways, the remaining section should not be punished.

catch 22 said...

Good to cya back. :)

I never understood the motive behind the blocking of blogs. Just because few blogs have objectionalble content(which is again debatable) u cannot block every blogger. look at the contribution of blogs in helping people during the Mumbai blogs.

Rashmi Kantharaja said...

@hari and @catch22
Thanks for the patience displayed , folks! :)
Hari,
You are right!I was equally amazed to know that blogs and bloggers had the potential to stir the media and the government.

catch22,
Seriously, man! there are so many blogs that have been serving a good cause. I dont know why they targeted blogs, if any media that sensitizes issues is to be banned, the first to go would be the 24x7 news channels that just prey for some trivial matter too to hype!