South Asia News

An Indian artist Pranava Prakash was assaulted by a gang who burst into the gallery in New Delhi, where he is exhibiting nudes of top Bollywood star Vidya Balan and other public figures. He told AFP:

Five guys came in on Sunday and started yelling at me, saying 'Your paintings are against Indian culture, we cannot tolerate them

They slapped me twice, threw me to the floor and then began pulling down the paintings, damaging three of my pictures.

There is a certain section of people who think they alone are the custodians of Indian culture, and anyone who disagrees with them is the enemy.

The Bangladeshi government has approved a repressive new anti-pornography law which would see offenders jailed for up to 10 years.

It is believed to be Bangladesh's first law specifically targeting the spread of pornography. The legislation, which is likely to be passed by parliament, bans making or selling of any kind of pornographic material. Those found guilty could also be fined up to $6,000.

The move seems to have come about after a string of sex tape scandals involving female celebrities.

Abul Kalam Azad, a government spokesman, claimed that the measures aim to protect young people and women from pornography, which he said, had spread like a disease through the internet and mobile phone technology.

Update: Passed by Parliament

30th January 2012.  See article from bdnews24.com

A bill was tabled in parliament with provisions of up to seven years of jail sentence for production, storage, marketing, sale, carrying, supply and exhibition of pornography.

Home minister Shahara Khatun presented the Pornography Control Act 2012 after which it was sent to a parliamentary committee for scrutiny.

According to the bill pornography is any dialogue, acting, posture, unclothed or partially unclothed dance in cinema, video, photography, graphics, audio-visual image or imagery otherwise captured and displayable, which causes sexual arousal and has no artistic or educational value. Also, such books, magazines, sculptures, cartoons and leaflets which cause the sexual arousal, and their negatives and soft copies would also be considered pornography.

The home minister claimed that pornography was spreading like a terrible disease across society and in absence of any law the crime and criminals cannot be stopped.

The Indian Army has reportedly asked all its personnel to quit social networking websites with immediate effect. It has directed them to refrain from joining social networking websites including Facebook, Orkut, and Google+. The policy is said to  safeguard the well-being of army personnel.

According to sources, the Indian Army had been monitoring the social networking activities of its officers to find out if they posted uniformed photos of themselves, weaponry, or other units for the past few months. It has now decided to issue a blanket ban on all such websites throughout the ranks.

The US Army has also suggested care over information sharedvia social networking lest it be used by terrorist organisations to target army units. They suggested:

• Restricting privacy settings to Only Me or Friends.
• Remove any personally identifiable data.
• Avoid sharing details about bases and capabilities
• Disable GPS/tagging/tracking applications

Pakistan has begun to implement a long threatened block on internet porn.

The Pakistan Telecommunications Authority has provided a list to the ISP's in Pakistan to block the frequently accessed adult sites. It is believed that more web pages will be added to the initial banned list of 1,000 websites and as many as 170,000 websites may be banned in the near future.

The currently blocked websites redirects the users to a new page with the following error message, This page is blocked due to restrictions enforced by the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority (PTA).

Top Gear's Christmas Special had a bit of fun in India. The usual irreverent jokes ridiculed India's food, toilets, traditional clothing, trains and history.

The jokes notably included Clarkson riding around the country's worst slums in a 4-litre Jaguar fitted with a toilet, joking: This is perfect because everyone here gets the trots.

Not all the jokes targeted India, there was plenty of self effacing fun too. An advertising banner incompetently pasted to the side of train was split as carriages parted  losing the last 3 letters from: Eat English Muffins 

Even David Cameron participated in the Top Gear fun. He had a cameo role waving off the Top Gear trio on a trade mission as ambassadors of Britain to save the UK from bankruptcy.

At the time the programme got up the nose of the nutter mp Keith Vaz.

Now the Indian High Commission in London has formally complained to the BBC, accusing its producers of deceiving them over the nature of the programme, which was jokingly billed as a trade mission.

Update: BBC Response

18th January 2012. See article from bbc.co.uk

Complaint

We've received complaints from some viewers who felt the Top Gear: India Special was offensive towards the country and its culture.

Top Gear's response

The Top Gear road trip across India was filled with incidents but none of them were an insult to the Indian people or the culture of the country. Our film showed the charm, the beauty, the wealth, the poverty and the idiosyncrasies of India but there's a vast difference between showing a country, warts and all, and insulting it. It's simply not the case that we displayed a hostile or superior attitude to our hosts and that's very clear from the way the presenters can be seen to interact with them along the way. We genuinely loved our time in India and if there were any jokes to be had they were, as ever, reflected back on the presenters rather than the Indian people.

Offsite Comment: Don't give way to the Top Gear-bashers

21st January 2012. See article from spiked-online.com

What Clarkson's audience understands that his shrill critics do not is that he is not to be taken seriously.

I wonder what proportion of the five million viewers of the Top Gear India Special over Christmas was desperate-to-be-offended members of the chattering classes? Skipping the second instalment of Great Expectations, they no doubt sat through the show solely to tweet about how awful Jeremy Clarkson and Co's monkeying about on the road to the Indian Himalayas was.

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Google India has filed a petition in the Delhi High Court saying that it does not exercise any control over content on YouTube, Google, Orkut or Blogspot in India, and thus can't be summoned to an Indian court in a criminal case against it related to inflammatory images of Gods and Goddesses posted on some of its websites.

The petition to quash a criminal complaint was submitted by Google India's lawyers in the Delhi High Court.

The original criminal complaint was filed by editor of Akbari, Vinay Rai last month. Google's India MD Rajan Anandan has been summoned to appear in a lower court on Friday in connection with this complaint.

According to the petition, Google India says that it has been appointed just as a distributor of Google Inc.'s Adwords program in India, and thus it's India MD does not control the Blogger, Google or YouTube websites. Google India furthur says that sites such as Orkut.com are owned by Google Inc, and thus it is not even an intermediary' as defined in the Indian IT Act, and thus can't be summoned to answer in any case regarding content.

Mukul Rohatgi, counsel for Google India, told ET that it's humanly impossible to monitor or remove the content before it is uploaded on the internet. My client Google India is different from Google Inc, and does not have any control over the platform. Google India is just an advertising and revenue collection body.

Appearing for Vinay Rai, his counsel SPM Tripathi said that according to IT Rules, 2011, the websites have to remove the content within 36 hours of receiving a court order, which they have not complied with. The content on the websites is derogatory against Hindu, Muslim and Christian Gods and Goddesses, and can spark a riot if publicised. It incites hatred and enmity between communities and thus should be removed by the parties.

Update: Delays in the case India v The Internet

20th January 2012. See article from zdnet.com

The Delhi High Court delayed hearings on petitions by Facebook and Google to dismiss criminal proceedings against them in the country's Web censorship case. The two Internet giants are among 21 companies that have been asked to develop a mechanism to block objectionable material in India, and the Indian government has given the green light for their prosecution.

Earlier this week, Facebook and Google told the Delhi High Court they cannot block offensive content that appears on their services. Although the case was originally filed in a lower court, the companies have appealed to the Delhi High Court, challenging the lower court's ruling asking them to take down some content. The high court has now pushed back the case till February 2, according to NDTV. If their petitions fail, the 21 companies will have to face trial in the lower court, which has its next hearing scheduled for March 13.

India's Supreme Court has slammed the Tamil Nadu state government for banning the screening of film Dam 999, saying that when the whole country has one constitution, your state can't have a separate constitution.

The court asked how the state government could ban the screening of the film after the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) has granted a certificate for the exhibition of the film.

The court, however, did not pass any order actually ifting the state government's ban.

Justice Ganguly said: The law is clear and the freedom of speech and expression has to be protected. If you are apprehending the breach of peace and law and order, it is your duty to take steps to prevent the same.

The court said that the state government had no role to suspend the screening of a film once the censor board has allowed the screening of the film in the entire country and issued a certificate to that effect.

The amil Nadu state government must now explain its actions by Jan 25 in time for the next hearing on Feb 9.

The major Bollywood film, Ghost, has received the full censorial treatment. Supposedly excessive gore-content offended India's film censor who made severe cuts.

Director Puja Jatinder Bedi says that some of the cuts have been unjustified. The censor board cut one of the most important scenes in my film. It's a scene where the ghost gets crucified like Jesus Christ. The scene was very pivotal for the screenplay, said Bedi.

The censor board felt that the crucifixion would hurt religious sentiments of the Christian community. Also, the brutality was being perpetrated on a woman. The blood and gore content is high enough for Ghost to be rated as the most violent film ever. So, the censors have toned down all the murder sequences, she added.

However, when contacted, J.P. Singh, the censor board's regional officer at Mumbai, said that the crucifixion sequence had only been reduced, not removed.

That scene is still there in the film. Only its length has been shortened to reduce the impact of the extreme brutality shown on a girl. The examining committee has given five-six cuts. All of them were extremely brutal. There was a scene showing a dead body's legs being cut. Another excessively violent scene showed a girl being beaten for a very long time by many people, said Singh.

Sunny Leone Biggest reasons for complaint

India's Broadcast Content Complaints Council (BCCC) received 3,441 complaints in six months since its inception in June last year, with biggest attractions for complaint being a Rakhi Sawant hosted programme and the appearance of porn star Sunny Leone in reality show Bigg Boss 5.

The self-regulatory body dismissed most of the complaints, officials said. Just 479 were specific complaints which were considered in remit and were heard by the Counci.

Among these 36 complaints specifically raised issues related to the appearance of Leone on Colors Channel programme Bigg Boss 5. Some of the complainants had claimed that children are being exposed to porn industry as they are getting curious to know who is a porn star.

BCCC upheld the whinges against Leone considering her appearance on Bigg Boss-5 to be promotional material for her own websites. The censor advised the channel to choose future participants with care.

The most complaints, 58, were received about the telecast of a programme Gazab Desh ki azab Kahania which was hosted by Rakhi Sawant on Imagine TV.

A majority of the other complainants objected to depiction of sexuality in television programmes. BCCC took action ranging for advising channels to not telecast programmes during general viewing hours to prohibiting telecast in some cases.

Last August, Muhammad Ruhul Amin Khandaker, a lecturer of the Department of Information and Technology at Jahangirnagar University in Bangladesh, updated his Facebook status to comment on a series of fatal road traffic accidents involving celebritries.

With a heavy dose of irony the lecturer asked on his Facebook profile why the prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, couldn't suffer a similar fate.

Maybe it wasn't clever or very funny, but expressing the wish that a political leader could vanish is the kind of thing stated all over the internet on a daily basis. Clearly there is a line to be drawn between people just wishing they did not have to endure politicians in their life and people who are directly making a threat to the life of an elected leader.

That line is called common sense. But in this case the Bangladeshi government doesn't seem to possess a great deal of it as the High Court just sentenced Khandaker to six months in jail.

In an effort to attract younger viewers without offending the older ones, Indian TV is now showing some of America's edgiest shows - but cutting out the edge.

One incident turned an episode of Friends into a legend of unwatchable TV. The show hinged on the gag that two pages in a cookbook got stuck together and the character Rachel mistakenly made a fruit pastry with beef. The station bleeped out the word beef, a show of sensitivity for Hindus' reverence for cows, leaving viewers to guess why her diners were so disgusted.

It's just as perplexing for the suddenly chaste vampires of the lusty True Blood and for the serial killer star of Dexter, who is constantly changing blood-splattered clothes for no apparent reason on Indian TV. Or for David Duchovny's Californication lech Hank Moody, who disappears into a bedroom with a beautiful women and then suddenly appears in a disjointed scene from later in the episode.

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