Two days after a report by The Wire pointing out that the Narendra Modi government had blocked the ‘short’ version of a satirical video on the state of democracy in India while the full version existed on YouTube for all to watch, the Indian government succeeded in getting the full version blocked.
The video in question was published by the Australia-based Juice Media channel on YouTube on June 1. It is an unforgiving satirical take on government overreach in a democracy, narrated in an anodyne public-service-announcement style, as part of the channel’s ‘honest government ad’ series. It focused on several countries – many having gone or going to the polls this year – but most screen time was devoted to India, and how the Modi government has imprisoned opposition leaders, bulldozed minorities’ homes and killed the freedom of expression.
The video has 642,715 views now, but short unauthorised clips of it were shared multiple times on social media sites. Juice Media also uploaded the part relevant just to India as a Short — a video format on YouTube which allows shorter uploads.
On June 11, the channel’s owner Giordano Nanni got a notice from YouTube saying that the Union home ministry had requested that the Short be blocked in India because it invokes Indian Penal Code sections on provocation to cause riots, break public peace, and cause public mischief. The government also cited the Prevention of Insults to the National Honour Act, which deals with “insults to [the] Indian National Flag and Constitution of India.”
Nanni told The Wire that he was not surprised because his Indian viewers had foretold such an outcome. He has shared the following prophetic comment on the original video.
A viewer wrote ‘waiting for India to get YT to block this’ as a comment on the Juice Media video which India got YouTube to block.
Nanni had earlier wondered why the government would have been compelled to block just the Short and not the whole video – which had likely skipped notice. “Perhaps they thought the Short was more likely to go viral,” he had conjectured.
Two days later, on June 22, YouTube once again wrote to Nanni, this time saying that it received “a legal complaint from a government entity” on the video.
YouTube added that it blocked the video in India “after review”. Instead of the video, Indian viewers can see the message ‘Video unavailable: This content is not available on this country domain due to a legal complaint from the government.’
YouTube’s email to Juice Media, informing them of the blocking move in India.
YouTube’s email about blocking the full version has no mention of laws the government felt the video had run foul of. It has a line on YouTube’s mandate to remove “content where necessary to comply with local laws.” The Indian government has blocked videos and entire channels – often themed around news – under the Information Technology Rules before.
The Wire has written to YouTube for details on the government intimations it received and the steps its review process concerned. This article will be updated if a spokesperson responds.
For Nanni and his tiny team of four, getting censored is not new – the Indonesian and Tasmanian governments have previously acted against videos on the channel that are critical of their behaviour. Nanni does what he and his team often do in situations where they are made to tackle bigger forces – resort to humour.
“We were left wondering why the Chosen One had only blocked the Short version of our video, now we know he probably just hadn’t noticed until The Wire published an article pointing out that a full version of the video existed,” Nanni says.
The ‘Chosen One’ is a play on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s claim on the election trail that he had divine origins.
Nanni had said earlier that he and his team made this video because Indians had asked for one on their country. Comments on the Instagram post with which Nanni announced the latest blocking move range from “largest democracy for you, ladies and gentlemen” to “we warned you!”.
A comparison of the number of Indian viewers on the Juice Media’s YouTube channel in the last year (left) versus the last month (right).
Will the fact that the video is blocked to viewers of the most populated country on earth have an effect on his channel’s revenue? Nanni says he is not really concerned about that. But he did reveal something which may explain why the video came under the government’s radar. “Normally India is in the top dozen or so countries that watches our videos. But as you can see, in the past month it jumped up to number two,” he says.
