India has blocked access to certain pages of the ABC's website as part of a crackdown on internet content which it says incites racial hatred.

The government has blamed internet activity for fanning fears that resulted in thousands of migrants fleeing to the north-east last week from Bangalore, Chennai and Mumbai.

The government says the migrant workers feared they were going to be attacked by Muslim mobs, so it responded by blocking more than 300 websites it says incite hate and panic.

The blocked material includes web pages, images and links on sites including Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia, the ABC and Qatar-based Al Jazeera.

Social libertarians accuse the Indian government of being high-handed and ignoring civil freedoms, but India has defended its decision.

Space to play or pause, M to mute, left and right arrows to seek, up and down arrows for volume. Listen Duration: 3 minutes 21 seconds 3 m 21 s India censors foreign websites Download 1.5 MB

"We have met with success. These pages were a threat to India's national security and we demanded their immediate deletion," Kuldeep Singh Dhatwalia, a spokesman for India's home ministry, said.

"Spreading rumours to encourage violence or cause tension will not be tolerated. The idea is not to restrict communication."

Among the blocked content were photographs by AFP and other news agencies from Burma in the British Daily Telegraph, a parody Twitter account pretending to be from prime minister Manmohan Singh and dozens of YouTube videos.

The ABC issued a statement saying it was "surprised by the action" after online content about unrest in Burma between Muslims and Buddhists was included on the blocking list.

India's home minister, Sushil Kumar Shinde, insisted in a statement the government was "only taking strict action against those accounts or people which are causing damage or spreading rumours".

Mr Shinde added that the government sought to block the Burma online photos because they were "disturbing the atmosphere here in India".

The government said photographs of clashes in Burma were circulating on the internet with fake captions claiming the scenes were from the north-eastern Indian state of Assam, where 80 people have died in recent ethnic violence.

Backlash

Twitter users, legal experts and analysts criticised the government's approach, which appeared to have resulted in only partial blocking of material, much of which was still accessible.

"The officials who are trusted with this don't know the law or modern technology well enough," Pranesh Prakash, program manager at the Centre for Internet and Society research group, said.

"I hope that this fiasco shows the folly of excessive censorship and encourages the government to make better use of social networks and technology to reach out to people."

Vivek Sood, senior Supreme Court lawyer and an author on internet legalisation, called the government's step "a gross abuse of power".

"It's completely illegal under the Indian IT Act," he told The Economic Times.

Indian journalist Kanchan Gupta, who is often critical of the government, had his Twitter account targeted by a government blocking order in a move he called a "political vendetta".

Al Jazeera webpages on the blocking list, including a report on the exodus from Bangalore, appeared unaffected by the government orders, the channel's Delhi bureau chief Anmol Saxena said.

Ministers earlier complained they had not received cooperation from websites and social network groups.

United States State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said as India "seeks to preserve security, we are urging them also to take into account the importance of freedom of expression in the online world".

ABC/AFP