Indian Court Pressurised Google,Yahoo and Facebook to remove offensive content and responding to which Google India has now removed almost all content which was thought to be offensive to politicians and religious groups – Along with Google ,Yahoo, and Facebook, 22 sites have been given two weeks to present content censorship plans to the court.

Google India has removed an unspecified number of sites and images from Google services in India (Reports says that these removed sites include Blogger and YouTube too) in response to an ongoing court case. The action was taken after several weeks of pressure by the Indian government against nearly 24 Internet companies, including Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, and Facebook.

According to a press release by Press Trust of India, these firms now have until March 1st  to present their action plans regarding objectionable content on their services to a New Delhi court.

The case highlights the conflict between the typically freewheeling Western view of the Internet and conservative political and religious sentiments eastern cultures. For a long time Indian officials have been outraged by offensive material hosted on social networking sites and other Internet services, and they claimed that these social networks and similar sites were violating Indian law by hosting offensive content against Islam and other religions and insults the prime minister and other politicians.

According to Indian law, it is illegal to distribute material that created “enmity between classes” or “prejudice to national integration”. since india has been suffering ethnic clashes for a lonng time  it is a serious issue in a country that has 21 “scheduled” languages, hundreds of tribal groups, and a potent mixture of religions including Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Christians,  Buddhists, Jews, Jains, Zoroastrians, and Baha’i.

The Indian government dismissed the allegation that its actions were censorship; rather, it says it is enforcing local law and will prosecute offenders.

Facebook, Yahoo, Microsoft, and others have questioned their inclusion in the case before the New Delhi court, saying no specific charges have been laid against them. Prosecutors have said they would be providing the companies with the materials and evidence in their case.

None of the 22 companies named in the case have issued statements on the matter yet , and we have no idea how they will respond to the court’s request for voluntarily producing an action plan to keep offensive material off their Indian sites.

The controversy has erupted in the wake of social networking service Twitter implementing a mechanism that enables it to block distribution of tweets on a country-by-country basis; that move was followed almost immediately with a similar mechanism from Google’s Blogger.