Russiarecently ordered a block onWhatsApp– a cross-platform messaging and calling service byMeta. Over 100 million users in that country are now being nudged, not subtly but forcibly, toward a state-built messaging app called Max, which critics and also Meta allege is a "state-owned surveillance app". TheKremlin, of course, says this is about “data sovereignty” and compliance with Russian law. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told media that the block came "due to Meta's unwillingness to comply with the norms and the letter of Russian law."

Chinahas been playing this card since 2009 — and they played it rather brilliantly. Facebook, Twitter, Google, YouTube: all blocked. Backed by the power centre at Beijing rose WeChat, Weibo, Baidu, and Bilibili — the domestic platforms so capable and so deeply woven into Chinese daily life that, as Asia Power Watch noted, "few in China cared" when the foreign apps disappeared. Booming indigenous apps comfortably covered the local market.

Now the question circling policy circles and dinner tables in India is: should we do the same?

On paper, the argument isn't illogical – why not opt for sovereignty? India has 958 million internet users. It is the largest market in the world for WhatsApp. And yet, not a single major social media platform it runs on was Made-in-India. Every piece of data generated when a farmer in Punjab searches for crop prices or a teenager in Chennai shares a reel flows through servers owned by American corporations governed by American laws. From a pure sovereignty standpoint, that is a legitimate concern and a very compelling demand.

The economic argument also has teeth. China's Great Firewall, whatever its human rights horrors, created a captive market of nearly 700 million users — roughly a quarter of the global internet population — and incubated companies like Tencent, Alibaba, and Baidu into global titans. As research published by Domino Theory noted, "one consequence of the Great Firewall was the protectionist effect it had, which allowed Chinese technology companies to blossom in the absence of foreign competition." And Baidu - China’s leading internet and AI company, best known for its search engine and for developing AI technologies such as autonomous driving, large language models, and cloud services - did not have to compete with Google. And WeChat did not have to beat WhatsApp. That is a genuine industrial policy advantage.

India has no equivalent. Its startups compete on a level playing field — or rather, an uneven one, against American platforms with decades of network effect and billions in capital.

The comparison collapses the moment you examine what a "sovereign internet" actually requires in practice. China built its Great Firewall over three decades, starting in the mid-1990s, methodically and with a single-party state's complete control over infrastructure, judiciary, media, and enterprise. It required companies like Sina Weibo to censor their own platforms daily, receiving, as researchers documented, "daily notices from local and central governments about what should be discussed, promoted and censored." According to the report Sina Weibo has a department that ‘manages’ censorship. This department removes content "at the behest of authorities" under threat of suspension, fines, or criminal prosecution of personnel, according to Freedom House'sFreedom on the Net 2021report.

India is an active democracy with aSupreme Court– the top law upholder of the nation – that has, on two occasions, upheld the constitutionality of content-blocking powers. The top court of India has stressed – both in 2015 and 2020 - that blocking orders must be "narrowly tailored" and "subject to procedural safeguards."

For context: India has 22 official languages, 28 states, and eight union territories – each with their own political interests; a comparatively (when the comparison is from Russia and China) free press, and a civil society that has power and freedom to protest. Russia's approach — herding users toward a state surveillance app — would face immediate constitutional challenge here, and should.

There's also the question of what "digital sovereignty" actually means in the Indian context.

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