Bangalore: Google’s move to remove “objectionable” content was met by the Indian court with more pressure to place a “blanket ban” on content hosted by its subsidiary sites such as Blogger, Orkut, and YouTube. The world’s most popular search engine retorted to the case against it, presenting its reply to the Delhi High Court  today saying that the monitoring and censorship of online material would be against the Indian Constitution’s right to freedom of speech and expression.

In its reply to the court,Google Inc. said “Premised on the philosophy of free speech, Google Inc does not select or procure the content that is uploaded on its websites nor does it perform proactive monitoring or editing in relation to the content uploaded.”

It also replied on behalf of its subsidiaries YouTube and Orkut, saying “Most products that allow for user generated content are governed by a set of common policies such as prohibiting hate speech, graphic violence, threat of violence against specific individuals or groups and the promotion of dangerous or illegal acts. The content available on these websites in the nature of user uploaded or generated content and are not created, selected, affected, controlled or determined by Google Inc or Youtube in any manner whatsoever.”

21 sites which included Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and Facebook were ordered late last year by the Delhi High Court to remove online content which was offensive and objectionable to religious sentiments in a censorship case. One case was filed by a Muslim religious leader, who accused the sites of hosting content that insulted Islam. Yahoo and Microsoft were taken off the list of companies whose content was filed against, since there was insufficient evidence. The complainant Mufti Aijaz Arshad Qasmi was recently fined 5,000 rupees (US$101) for involving Microsoft in his complaint.

According to Reuters, the companies were ordered to develop a mechanism that blocked material considered religiously offensive to Hindus, Muslims and Christians. The sites obliged, removing content on Indian domain sites that came close to violating Indian law.

If the High Court doesn’t drop proceedings against the other firms, a trial will begin later this month, and if convicted, company executives could face imprisonment and high fines.

According to Mashable, the issue of online censorship in the world’s largest democracy has alarmed supporters of free speech, but the Indian government cited unity as the reason for the cases. India has over 2000 ethnic groups following various religions, and comments detrimental to one group would result in discord.