The Indian government drew a lot of criticism recently when it decided to ban a documentary film by the British Broadcasting Corporation about the 2002 Gujarat riots. It was officially considered a mere propaganda piece making unsubstantiated allegations when the matter had been settled in court.

Even if one was against the film, banning was a rather ham-handed way of dealing with the issue. It showed an over-reach by the government. With today’s availability of communications technology and access to social media, anyone anywhere can see it if they want. And a government that takes pride, rightfully so, in how it has harnessed digital technology for its national development programmes should know that. So, one has to take solace and dismiss the government’s action as a knee-jerk response by a low level official stuck in a previous era.

One can also throw a stone at colonialism by suggesting that the art of banning books was inherited from the British administration. Various publications had been banned at that time, including Gandhi’s Hind Swaraj. Maybe, there is still an under secretary in the depths of some government department who has to meet his target of banning something or the other on a regular basis.

Maybe free speech supporters yearn for the US where they think there is no censorship. But oh, yes! The ‘free world’ as it would like to title itself has its share of censorship except that it has cleverly shifted the responsibility to the private sector. And that is as it should be in a society that embraces capitalism. And it was Noam Chomsky, the linguistics scholar and social critic, who drew our attention to this phenomenon of a propaganda model in 1988.

The recent episode of the cancellation of the Dilbert comic strip in the US serves as a good example. The comic strip pokes fun at work and office issues centered around Dilbert, a white-collar office worker. There is a huge market of office goers who face frustrations at work every hour of the day and can connect with the strip. This made Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert, a very rich man syndicating his work to reportedly about 2,000 publications. A former company executive, he was an insider who could idealise the stupid manager and the abrasive co-worker.

‘Hate group’

Perhaps the success got to him. Over the YouTube recently, Adams made remarks that certainly can be considered as hurtful to the black community by calling them a ‘hate group’. He advised that white people (he is white) should get away from black people. He was commenting on a so-called survey that found only a small majority of Black Americans agreed with the statement ‘It’s ok to be white.’

Not all free speech is loved. And the powerful media business in the US, especially the major newspapers, immediately saw themselves as potentially being branded racist for publishing Adams work, feared advertisers cancelling their contracts, revenues falling, profits suffering, investors upset, and you know how it goes. So they quickly announced that they were dropping the cartoon strip from their publications because they considered its creator as racist. Penguin Random House that was due to publish a book of Adams’ cartoons soon dropped its plans.

There are some liberal states that pass laws requiring the removal of statues or renaming of institutions that carry the moniker of individuals associated with slavery. Others follow another AdamS (Adam Smith) teachings that market forces can make the government invisible, or something like that.

So private censorship, as in the Scott Adams case, frequently happens in the US. If you say something in public considered potentially hurtful to Israel, you can find yourself quickly erased. Aspiring politicians have learned it the hard way.

I guess I’m old fashioned and between official censorship and the private sector, I would still prefer the former. It gives you one more reason to rave and rant about the government. If censoring is left to the private sector, it just slips through your fingers.

The writer is an emeritus professor at Suffolk University, Boston

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