Against censorship

As you may be aware, a number of blogs were banned by the Indian Government following the terrorist acts in Mumbai. For a while, many readers in India had access to no blogs at all (Desipundit provides details).

We deplore censorship (Shivamvij provides a balanced articulation of the debate).
Unfortunately, this is not the first time Indian Government has resorted to censorship. Mitesh gives a good list of ‘banned in India’ — it is hard to think where censoring freedom of speech has improved welfare. We discuss Indian censorship here and here (and terrorism here).

We are reminded of the quote attributed to Benjamin Franklin: Those who would trade liberty for security deserve neither.

Desh deserves security, but security won’t come by sacrificing liberty.