At 7 minutes to midnight (New Delhi time) on November 11, 2018, the Indian government sent us at BannedThought.net an email informing us that in less than two days time it would hold a hearing in New Delhi to decide upon blocking public access by people in India to this website, or at least to the parts of it which contain materials from India and which express the views of large numbers of people in India which the government disapproves of. While we were invited to send a representative to argue our case at that hearing, this is not only impractical for time and financial reasons, it would also obviously be a total waste of time. (Or possibly even lead to our representative being arrested and imprisoned as has recently been happening even to people’s lawyers in India!) The committee meeting on Nov. 14 will almost certainly be a mere bureaucratic formality in any case. And there is nothing that we could say there that we don’t already say on our website—namely that we fervently support the right of free speech and the right to publish and distribute progressive or revolutionary materials not only in India, but everywhere in the world. This extremely basic democratic right is opposed by the current ruling class in India. So there is no point for us to say anything further at this meeting or elsewhere to this despicable anti-democratic ruling class bent on the suppression of all ideas that they disagree with.
