Kaali poster controversy: Twitter withholds post by filmmaker after govt order

The tweet in question included an image of the poster of Manimekalai’s latest documentary Kaali, which depicted a woman dressed as Goddess Kaali smoking a cigarette and holding a pride flag, according to a disclosure made by Twitter to the Lumen database — an archive of complaints and requests for online content removal. The image has caused controversy, with some saying that it hurts religious sentiments, and has led to FIRs being registered against Manimekalai by police in Delhi and Uttar Pradesh.

Earlier, the High Commission of India in Ottawa sent a missive to Canadian authorities asking them to immediately withdraw all “provocative material”. In a statement issued on Monday, the High Commission noted that they received complaints from leaders of the Hindu community in Canada about the disrespectful depiction of Hindu deities on the poster of a film showcased as part of the ‘Under the Tent’ project at the Aga Khan Museum, Toronto. Following the missive, the Aga Khan Museum tendered an apology and removed the presentation of Manimekalai’s documentary.

“The presentation is no longer being shown at the Museum. The Museum deeply regrets that one of the 18 short videos from ‘Under the Tent’ and its accompanying social media post have inadvertently caused offence to members of the Hindu and other faith communities,” the museum said in a statement.

The government’s request for blocking the particular tweet came on Tuesday, according to data shared by Twitter with the Lumen database on Wednesday. The tweet is blocked only in India and can be accessed from other parts of the world. Twitter voluntarily submits information about content and accounts it has blocked following government orders with the Lumen database, which is managed under an independent research project of the Berkman Klein Centre for Internet & Society at Harvard University.

Queries sent to Manimekalai, Twitter and the Ministry of Electronics and IT were not answered.

Twitter’s compliance with the government’s blocking order comes amid legal action initiated by the microblogging platform against some government missives ordering it to take down certain content posted on the website.

Twitter has claimed that many of these blocking orders are procedurally and substantively deficient under Section 69(A) of the Information Technology Act, 2000. This includes aspects such as not giving prior notice to users before taking down content posted by them. According to a source, the company has alleged that the Ministry of Electronics and IT has failed to demonstrate how some of the content it wants taken down falls under the purview of Section 69(A). In several cases, Twitter has claimed that the basis on which multiple accounts and content flagged by the ministry is either “overbroad and arbitrary” or “disproportionate”.

An analysis of the Lumen database shows that there was a significant uptick in the amount of content and accounts the company blocked following government orders in June. Last month, Twitter made 12 separate disclosures on the content and accounts it had blocked in India, compared to two disclosures in May, three in April, five in March, four in February and nine in January. Each disclosure has multiple links for the information the company blocked.

For instance, a disclosure made by Twitter on June 26 showed that it had blocked over 80 accounts and tweets based on requests from the government in 2021. The blocked content included some tweets from the international advocacy group Freedom House, journalists, politicians and supporters of the farmers’ protest.

According to Twitter’s latest global transparency report, between January and June 2021, India accounted for the fourth highest number of legal content takedown requests to the company. In this particular reporting timeframe, Twitter received 43,387 legal demands to remove content specifying 1,96,878 accounts, with India accounting for 11 per cent of global legal demands.

In the same period, Twitter saw a 1,060 per cent increase in blocking accounts, and said that the “spike in accounts withheld was particularly the result of Twitter’s compliance of an Indian blocking order issued under India’s Information Technology Act, 2000.”