After three years of being a regular blogger, I was flabbergasted when I received a comment on one of my posts that threatened to sue me for an exorbitant amount of money, dangled the prospect of jail over my head and slyly hinted at taking my passport away so as to prevent me from travelling to the UK for my education.

After a whole host of events too tedious to describe, I was forced by a multitude of circumstances to pull down the post permanently from my blog. I even had to go so far as to change my moniker on that blog (wherein I was already writing under a pseudonym) because the threats – although thankfully by this time completely hollow – kept coming. As my original pseudonym was alarmingly close to my real name, it had to go.

The question begs to be asked… what had I done that was so reprehensible?

In a wrap of an event, I dared say I did not like a person’s choice of apparel.

Clichéd perhaps, but I whole-heartedly abide by the quote found in the book The Friends of Voltaire (1906), written by Evelyn Beatrice Hall under the pseudonym S.G. Tallentyre: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”

Freedom of speech, to me, signifies being able to say what you think without the fear of repercussions. It means allowing people to opine unreservedly without them indulging in morbid thoughts of what can befall them if they do so. Society seems to be moving back to Tudor times when it was wholly possible to have your head lopped off for not agreeing with the king. That scares me.

While I am a supporter of preventing the spread of abject lies, why should bloggers be penalized for being truthful and accurate? I firmly believe that to be a trusted blogger, you cannot lie in your posts. Because of the two-way and immediate conversation available to bloggers and their readers, there lies the possibility of a near-immediate response to any mistakes made in the blog post.

Was I a coward for removing the post from my blog? Perhaps. Should I have fought for the right to say what I thought, as it harmed no one and was most definitely not defamatory? Many might think so. Do I think twice before posting something on a blog now? Yes, however harmless I think it might be.

The most important question, in my opinion, remains: will I ever put that blog post online again? Yes. But only when I hold the power in my hands. Because sadly, right now it’s all about who has the power to exercise free speech as opposed to who has the right to.

Devina Divecha alternates between living in muggy Sheffield and hot Dubai, despite originally hailing from rainy Bombay. If she’s not talking, she’s advocating the right to talk. It just works better this way. Read more at http://devinadivecha.wordpress.com/ and predictably enough, her Twitter handle is @DevinaDivecha

I’ve always been a strong supporter of censorship, primarily because people don’t understand that with freedom comes responsibility. I have also believed that censorship was created for the good of society.

But when those controlling the content are responsible for societal turmoil, censorship turns into tyranny.

Many nations in the Middle East control Internet content, and in many ways it’s not wrong. But when a YouTube video or a blog post is the cause of deportation, or in  Omid Reza’s case, legal murder, a line needs to be drawn.

In 1857, there was an Indian Military Revolt that took place under the British Raj that is widely debated as the first organized revolution against the British government. This resulted in the British government creating laws to curb the freedom of the people in India, which was a catalyst to a chain reaction of Mutiny throughout.

Just like that, if revolution has taken a new form online, it is bound to be shot down over and over again. And just like any revolution in the past, it doesn’t die on punishment. As a matter of fact it escalates.

Those who control content anywhere, be it online, broadcast or print, must know that their primary function is the good of the society. And if they themselves are the biggest problem of the society, they won’t survive for long.