The IT Rules introduced by the Narendra Modi government are cultivating a climate of self-censorship for the audiovisual industry and legal and economic threats, a recent study has suggested.

The study, published last month and titled The Road to Censorship: The Case of Digital Audiovisual Industries in India, is authored by Smith N Mehta and Eedan R Amit Danhi, both professors at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. 

The study uses a mixed-methods approach to probe the implications of the IT Rules for digital creators. It includes qualitative content analysis of the legal text, analysis of government communications and trade press articles, and interviews with practitioners and policy experts.

It said that the IT Rules “imposed obligations on social media intermediaries and platforms like Netflix, such as cooperation with law enforcement, content takedown mechanisms, and consumer grievance redressal processes” and it supersedes “a deeper history of the successive state’s efforts to regulate content” related to issues like religion and national identity. It says the situation is further worsened “by threats from extremist groups affiliated with the BJP and right-wing groups against platforms like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video”. This, the study says, raises “suspicions that these legislative measures serve ideological and political agendas under the guise of digital welfare”. 

It cited media and corporate legal expert Ashok Mansukhani, who said that the rapid growth of the Indian OTT user base should have prompted “the state to follow the TRAI’s advice for light touch facilitative regulation”, but “in the prevailing polarised environment, the government has slowly but surely tightened its hold on all digital media”. Mansukhani also said that the IT Rules and the Broadcasting Bill would have a “chilling” effect on the programming strategies of the streaming services. 

It quoted another study by Aman Abhishek, which argued that the IT Rules “overrides constitutional provisions and gives executionary powers to the state to weaponise grievances by organising right-wing groups to make collective complaints and increase the burden of clarification on the grievance officer”.

The authors spoke to a member from the content regulation team of a streaming service, who told them that the introduction of the IT Rules had led to “a massive hiring spree in their team and an additional pressure to develop internal guidelines and policies on regulatory and compliance issues for its streaming service”. 

‘Coordinated complaints’ 

Over the years, right-wing groups, including the RSS and Shiv Sena, have pressured streaming services to avoid content they perceive as “anti-Hindu”, also prompting regulatory actions, said the study.

The study pointed out that in 2021, the ministry of broadcast directed Amazon Prime to remove select scenes from its web series, Tandav, on account of complaints of showing the Hindu religion and the prime minister in a negative light. A series of lawsuits were filed against the OTT series, but “a response sought under the RTI Act by The Internet Freedom Foundation, a digital rights based organisation, revealed coordinated complaints against Tandav ‘citing anti-Hindu and anti-Dalit content’ commissioning practices”. 

Over the Tandav controversy, the study quoted a producer as saying that the “platforms have been very mindful of the kind of content they put out so as to avoid backlash”. 

“Platforms have become increasingly cautious, carefully curating their content to prevent conflicts with socio-religious and political sensitivities. This pre-emptive self-censorship indicates an environment where fear of repercussions heavily influences creative decisions,” according to the study. 

‘Significant ambiguity’

In 2019, the RSS held meetings with Netflix and Amazon Prime video executives “to restrict anti-Hindu and anti-national” content, the study claimed. RSS affiliates, Bharitya Chitra Sadhana and Sanskar Bharati, met filmmakers, scriptwriters and online content curators and asked them to focus on “the brighter side of India”. Similarly, BJP politician Tajinder Bagga lodged a police complaint against Anurag Kashyap, director of Sacred Games, alleging that the series intentionally insulted and outraged the religious feelings of the Sikh community. 

In 2020, the Shiv Sena in Maharashtra filed a police complaint against Netflix for “defaming the country” and hurting the Hindu community’s religious sentiments through its shows such as Sacred Games, Leila, Ghoul, and Patriot Act. Over these concerns, the Internet and Mobile Association of India developed a self-regulation code of best practices for online content, which was signed by 15 major streaming services such as Hotstar, Amazon Prime Video, SonyLIV, Zee5 and Jio in the same year. 

The code suggested standard practices such as an age categorisation system to classify content into distinct viewing categories and the banning of problematic content. But this failed to receive the broadcasting ministry’s approval. The ministry said that it required state intervention and laid down the IT Rules, 2021.   

The fear of backlash results in many platforms resorting to self-censorship. In addition, the ambiguous language and broad definitions within the IT Rules raise concerns about their arbitrary interpretations, leaving a “chilling” effect on programming decisions to align with the government’s expectations.

The study also claims that Hindu nationalism’s role in censorship, bolstered by state support, reveals a deliberate effort to exclude diverse voices, suppress dissent, and junk elements that do not conform to its definitions of identity. 

It says that the government’s “ambiguous communication strategies” entrench an environment of fear and control, leading to the suppression of alternative and resistant narratives, “while amplifying extremist voices aligned with the ruling party’s ideological agenda”. This has implications for both public order and freedom of expression.  

Unlike the more transparent regulatory frameworks of the US and several countries in Europe, India’s approach “introduces significant ambiguity” and blurs the lines between ideological and commercial interests, says the study published in the International Journal of Cultural Policy. It adds that this results in “a distinctive form of regulatory oversight”. 

“The EU’s regulatory framework emphasises the importance of cultural diversity and the protection of local content creators from being overshadowed by dominant global players like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video,” the study says. “In contrast, China’s approach underscores the government’s focus on maintaining strict control over the internet to ensure political stability and ideological conformity. Similarly, the United States’ ‘hands-off’ approach, characterised by minimal regulatory intervention, reflects the country’s commitment to free market principles and freedom of  expression.”

In India, regulations are a blend of both the American and European frameworks. This blend results in “regulatory oversights that indicate a laissez-faire foundation for the OTT market, while interventions serve to bolster the state’s ideological and commercial interests within and through the OTT business”. 

The study said that the IT rules propose a three-tier regulation mechanism, applicable as much to digital news outlets as to the online content curators. “The deployment of authorities at three levels to address the grievances, the top-two tiers of which are supervised directly at the Indian ministerial level, including the setting up of a self-regulating body, to the satisfaction of the MIB... Further, contrary to the MIB minister’s [Prakash Javadekar] claim that ‘the rules focus on self-classification of content instead of any form of censorship,’ the top two tiers hold the power to block, delete, modify, or censor the content.”

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