Rudyard Kipling opens his superb novel with the street urchin Kim teasing the son of a wealthy man. Kim kicks Chota Lal, whose father, Lala Dinanath, is worth half-a-million sterling, off the trunnion of the mighty cannon Zam-Zammah. Kipling loved India and wrote that it was the only democratic place in the world. It warms us to read this, but of course this was quite untrue in Kipling’s time and...

Judicial gag orders are as abhorrent as executive restraints on the media   Some interim orders issued by the courts have restrained publication or comment on certain matters of public importance. Orders imposing judicial censorship on the media have been extremely rare. Except in the rarest of rare cases, judicial “gag orders” are as abhorrent as executive restraints on the media. The changed situation calls for a comment on these judicial orders and...

BANGALORE: Protests against government's alleged attempt to govern the internet is gathering steam, with a public interest litigation in Kerala, a signature campaign and mass protests in Karnataka besides the political left throwing its weight behinds demand to withdraw the recently amended laws. The new rules, adopted last year, regulates reader's comments on online articles, user-posted videos, blogs, photos and posts on online social networks such as Facebook or Orkut. Opponents...

-The Hindu The outcome of the Press Council of India's decision to challenge the Allahabad High Court gag order on reporting the movement of troops will be an acid test of how far the judiciary can go in curbing media freedoms. The court's order — which directed senior officials in the Home and I&B departments of the Centre and the Uttar Pradesh government to ensure that no news on the subject...

Anand Patwardhan’s paean to Dalits, that took 14 years to compose, probes even as it praises, says Saroj Giri THERE IS an entrenched tendency to represent Dalits fighting for rights and reservations as just (another) competitive bloc vying for self-interest and power. It leads to a pernicious inversion: ‘Dalit rights’ dividing the nation along caste lines. Victim as perpetrator! Anand Patwardhan’s film Jai Bhim Comrade takes us beyond the grid of...