Bloggers in India experience it for the first time: a government censor in a country known to be the world’s largest democracy.

Post 11/7 Mumbai blasts, the Government identified 17 websites spreading messages of religious hatred and decided to take action against them. It gets the Internet Service Providers to block users from accessing these sites. But what happens actually is the blockade of entire domains, which host those sites, affecting thousands of bloggers along the way.

Is it any effective way of dealing with the hate-mongers? If the Indian service providers block you, the savvy users know how to reach the site using a by-pass, a Pakistan server in this case. Besides, how do you clamp down on the bloggers who have a positive role in today’s restrictive environs of the traditional media?

Is it not a culpability on the part of the Govt to curb the freedom of its citizens?

Like many bloggers, I find my site http://www.intrepidwriter.blogspot.com jammed. I can neither post nor view my blog.

A fellow blogger tells me that he can still type out and post his blog., but can’t view it. What’s a blog anyway, if you can’t get your audience to view and read it?

I’m a fiction writer, and a columnist, and have a fairly innocuous blog where excepting those few occasions when I rant like crazy, I usually muse about books, literature, publishing business and such things. I’ve been blogging for quite a while, and have an audience, though small.

So, what should I do under these circumstances? Of course, I should protest as my fellow bloggers are protesting elsewhere. But I don’t think the authorities really do care about it. Many countries today – Pakistan, Chaina, Soudi Arabia, for example – have introduced censor in internet long since and many bloggers have already faced intimidation and punishment from different regimes.

One wonders whether the good happy days of blogging are going to be over soon.