Upholding freedom of speech in India not possible, says Musk

NEW DELHI: Elon Musk said late on Wednesday that it was not possible to uphold the freedom of speech in India or else the twitter employees will go to jail.

Responding to a BBC journalist’s question, Twitter CEO said, he did not know “what exactly happened” when Twitter took down content related to a documentary critical of Prime Minister Narendra Modi earlier this year, adding that some rules related to social media content were “quite strict” in India.

In January, India ordered the blocking of a BBC documentary which questioned PM Modi’s leadership during the 2002 Gujarat riots, saying that even sharing of any clips via social media was barred.

The government had issued orders to Twitter to block over 50 tweets linking to the video of the documentary, Kanchan Gupta, an adviser to the government, had said. While the BBC had not aired the documentary in India, the video was uploaded on some YouTube channels, Ms Gupta had said.

“I am not aware of this particular situation… don’t know what exactly happened with some content situation in India,” Elon Musk said in an interview with the BBC broadcast live on Twitter Spaces, when asked if the site took down some content at the behest of the Indian government.

“The rules in India for what can appear on social media are quite strict and we can’t go beyond the laws of the country,” he said. The documentary focused on Narendra Modi’s leadership as chief minister of Gujarat during riots in 2002 in which at least 1,000 people were killed.