The Union government’s directive to Internet Service Providers to block access to online pornography is an assault on any Indian citizen’s personal freedoms. India is not a nanny state, and the government must be told in no uncertain terms.

A spokesperson for the Department of Telecommunications, the government body that issued the order to the ISPs, said that the blocking of sites was a result of a Supreme Court observation during a 2013 case involving child pornography. NN Kaul, the spokesperson, said, “We have written to the ISPs to restrict free and open access to 857 websites. This direction is based on the observations made by the honourable Supreme Court on 10 July and using section 79 (3)(b) of the Information Technology Act read with Article 19 (2) of the Indian Constitution.”