India has urged social network companies including Facebook, Twitter and Google to remove offensive material, unleashing a storm of criticism from Internet users in the world's largest democracy complaining of censorship.
Telecoms and Information Technology Minister Kapil Sibal had met executives from Facebook, Google, Yahoo and Microsoft on Monday to ask them to screen content, but no agreement with the companies was reached, he said.
Sibal denied he was promoting censorship and said some of the images and statements on social media sites risked fanning tensions in India.
A New York Times report claimed on Monday that said Sibal had called executives about six weeks ago and showed them a Facebook page that maligned ruling Congress Party chief Sonia Gandhi and told them it was "unacceptable".
"We have to take care of the sensibilities of our people, we have to protect their sensibilities. Our cultural ethos is very important to us," Sibal told reporters on Tuesday.
Sibal said his ministry was working on guidelines for action against companies who did not respond to the government's requests, but did not specify what action could be taken.
"We'll certainly evolve guidelines to ensure that such blasphemous material is not part of content on any platform."
India's largely unrestricted Internet access stands in contrast to tight controls in fellow Asian economic powerhouse China.
India's bloggers and Twitter users scorned the minister's proposals, saying a prefiltering system would limit free expression and was impossible to implement. The phrase #IdiotKapilSibal was one of India's most tweeted on Tuesday.
"The idea of prescreening is impossible. How will they do it?...There is no technology currently that determines whether content is 'defamatory' or 'offensive'," India-based cyber security expert Vijay Mukhi told Reuters.
Online rage
Tweets and other online reactions continued to criticise the minister.
"If Kapil Sibal wants to jail us for speaking our mind on the Internet, go ahead! We'll just go ahead and get bail like Kanimozhi," tweeted renowned stock market broker Rakesh Jhunjhunwala.
Another user, Faking News said: "Does Kapil Sibal mean that those Indian laws, which punish a person for hurting religious sentiments, don't apply to the online world?"
Author Chetan Bhagat, who has taken Twitter fire himself, posted that the Internet is something that cannot be censored.
"I hate some of the stuff written on the Internet, but I'd hate it even more if they were not allowed to write it. You can't censor the Internet. You shouldn't censor the Internet. That's it."
There was, however, some backing for Sibal.
"Spoke to Kapil Sibal. He assured me he opposes political censorship. Concern is communally inflammatory images and language which he described," said a posting from avid tweeter Shashi Tharoor, a former minister and party colleague of Sibal.
"Have to say, I support Kapil Sibal on the examples he gave me: Deeply offensive material about religions and communities that could incite riots."
The Indian scene
The country now has 100 million Internet users, less than a tenth of the country's population of 1.2 billion. It is the third-largest user base behind China and the United States. It is seen swelling to 300 million users in the next three years.
Last year, as part of a broader electronic security crackdown, Indian security agencies demanded access to communications sent through highly secure BlackBerry devices of Canadian smartphone maker Research In Motion
RIM gave India access to its consumer services, including its Messenger services, but said it could not allow monitoring of its enterprise email.
Facebook said it recognized the government's wish to minimize the amount of offensive content on the web. The California-based company said it removes content that violates company rules on nudity and inciting violence and hatred.
"(We) will continue to engage the Indian authorities as they debate this important issue," Facebook said in a statement.
Yahoo India declined to comment and Google said it would comment later in the day.