Weblogsky: Indian blogger resigns, but it ain't over til it's over...

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Indian blogger resigns, but it ain't over til it's over...

India's corner of the blogosphere is buzzing over a controversy that began when the webzine Jam published a critical piece, "The Truth About IIPM's Tall Claims,". The article suggests that India Institute of Planning and Management (IIPM) uses false advertising to attract students. IIPM visited Jam, then initiated legal action. Amit Varma at India Uncut describes what happened next:

A number of blogs sprung up overnight defending IIPM and defaming Rashmi and Gaurav Sabnis, a popular Indian blogger who had linked to Rashmi's article and added some facts of his own. Ludicrous rumours were spread about Aaj Tak, the news channel, having done a sting operation and having caught Amity, a rival of IIPM, giving money to Rashmi to do the story. Rashmi posted on the matter, and filthy comments were left on that post – you can read them for yourself and see the class of the people who left them. Also, Gaurav received a hilarious legal notice, which he reproduced on his blog – it was hilarious at the time, that is.

Then it got serious. IIPM happens to be a client of IBM, Gaurav's employer, having purchased a huge bunch of laptops from them. (In fact, they are a company with serious money clout, and are one of the biggest advertisers in India.) So what would you expect them to do? Well, Gaurav relates that on his post on the subject. It's bizarre and worrying stuff – read it.

I'll sum it up for you: to save his employer from a dharam sankat, Gaurav found himself faced with two courses of action – to delete his posts and apologise; or to resign from the company. What choice would he make? Isn't the practical thing to do obvious?

Yesterday Guarav posted that he'd resigned "in view of some really bizarre threats that were apparently made by IIPM to IBM." Specifically, the Dean of IIPM wrote IBM "saying that the IIPM Students Union had decided that if my blog posts were not deleted, then they would gather all the Thinkpads they had been given by the institute, and burn them in front of the IBM office in Delhi. Yes, that's right. Burn laptops!" Guarav writes that the decision to resign was his alone, driven by his respect for IBM and his commitment to free speech.

Via Dina Mehta, who forwarded me this link to a post at Indian Writing. There's also a summary post by Neha Viswanathan at Global Voices.

jon posted this at 7:39 AM
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