Along the lines of sedition law, the Karnataka government has said it will consider legal measures to take action against those who spread defamatory misinformation about Mahatma Gandhi.
During the Gandhi Jayanti celebrations at Gandhi Bhavan here on Monday, several Gandhians appealed to Chief Minister Siddaramaiah to take steps to tackle the misinformation surrounding Gandhi, especially on social media.
While Mr. Siddaramaiah promised that action would be taken against those who spread misinformation, Minister of Law and Parliamentary Affairs H.K. Patil said: “Gandhi is the Father of the Nation and if someone speaks about him in a disrespectful manner, then it should be considered as an atrocity. The government will discuss and see if we can come up with a legal framework to take action against such people.”
Website launched
Launching the website of Gandhi Bhavan, the Chief Minister urged everyone to try to follow the path walked by Gandhi and follow his principles to honour him. He also said that Gandhi’s dream of independence cannot be fully achieved until rural development is completed.
“Even after 76 years of Independence, Gandhi’s dream of rural development has not been fulfilled, despite us trying to follow the economic plans he had set up for the same. However, his principles are behind any development programmes our government rolls out,” the Chief Minister said.
Digitisation of books
Gandhi Bhavan, which is currently in the process of digitising its books also made its monthly magazine Bapu Prapancha accessible to readers as e-books, on the occasion of Gandhi Jayanti. Over 900 books out of the 10,000 books in Gandhi Bhavan are also available on the Internet Archive for interested readers.
Carl Malamud, co-founder, Servants of Knowledge — which is involved in the digitisation of books — said that Gandhi’s great triumph was his writing, his re-transmission of news reports, his analysis of the news, his opinions about the implications and ultimately his creation of communities that understood their rights and obligations under the law.
“Today, some might say he was a blogger. But one with a purpose. He certainly would have embraced the Internet, but of course he would have had very strong opinions about the net. There is no doubt in my mind about that,” Mr. Malamud said.
