India has banned Telegram. The app, beloved of crypto-enthusiasts and organised criminals alike, has been outlawed in the world’s most populous democracy because, we are told, it threatened the “purity” of university exams. Yes, exams. In a country where 15 million young people compete for 10,000 civil service posts, the government has decided that the real enemy is end-to-end encryption. The UK, predictably, has rushed to call for “global encryption oversight” – a bureaucratic euphemism for state surveillance. One almost expects a joint Anglo-Indian communiqué demanding that WhatsApp be renamed “WhatState”.
Let us be clear: this is not about cheating. It is about control. The Indian state, like all states, cannot bear the thought of citizens whispering in corners it cannot hear. The ban is a farce: Telegram is already accessible via VPN, and the real cheating networks operate on WhatsApp, Signal, and – gasp – physical paper. Yet the government, in its infinite wisdom, has chosen to perform a ritual sacrifice of digital privacy on the altar of bureaucratic convenience.
The historical parallel is obvious. This is the late Roman Empire, where the state issued ever more absurd edicts to control an empire that was, in reality, already fragmenting. Diocletian fixed prices; Modi bans apps. Both are attempts to impose order on chaos, and both will fail because the chaos is internal. India’s exam system is corrupt not because of Telegram, but because it is a system designed to produce clerks in a world that no longer needs them. The government’s real fear is not that students will cheat, but that they will realise the whole edifice is a sham.
And what of the UK? Our own government, with typical lack of self-awareness, has suggested that the Telegram ban is a model for “global encryption oversight”. This from a country that is itself debating the Online Safety Bill, a piece of legislation so Orwellian that even its authors flinch at the details. The British establishment has always loved the idea of controlled communication: the BBC, the Official Secrets Act, the D‑Notice system. Now they want to extend this paternalism to the entire world. The message is clear: you will have privacy only when we permit it.
But here is the truth that neither Delhi nor London will admit: encryption is not a bug, it is a feature. It is the only defence the individual has against the surveillance state. The real problem is not Telegram, but the totalitarian impulse that sees every private message as a potential crime. The exam cheating panic is a pretext, just as the “terrorism” panic was a pretext for mass surveillance after 9/11. Every crisis is an opportunity for the state to tighten its grip.
We are told that Telegram is a haven for pedophiles and terrorists. It is also a haven for journalists, dissidents, and ordinary people who wish to send a message without a government agent reading it over their shoulder. The same was said about the printing press, the telephone, and the internet itself. Every new technology is condemned as a threat until it is co-opted by the state. The pattern is as old as civilisation.
I am not naïve. I know that Telegram has flaws. I know that encryption can be abused. But the solution is not to ban encryption; it is to build a society where trust is not a scarce commodity. The ban on Telegram will not prevent exam cheating. It will simply drive the problem onto other platforms and destroy a useful tool for millions of legitimate users. The government has declared war on technology, and as always, technology will win.
The only question is: how many freedoms will be lost in the crossfire?
