What reason could they have for blocking DDG? Is it easier to find pirated content there than on Google or something? That's my best guess. I can't imagine they'd block on behalf of a competitor or something.

I suspect it's political censorship/surveillance of some sort. Some suggest it's collateral damage from the ban on Chinese apps. https://www.themobileindian.com/news/duckduckgo-blocked-by-m...

Whether that's a mistake or they've made an enemy of some sort is not clear. India is a democratic country but not an especially free one.

You never know. Could be a mistake where they were trying to block a certain path due to some search result of copyright infringement, but ended up banning the domain itself. One can only guess.

Reddit and Github have previously been temporarily banned in India due to similar "mistakes"

DDG is a strong advocate for user privacy, that might be all it takes.

Is it possible the big guys will provide (sell?) query surveillance feeds to random governments while DDG can't/won't?

even the http version is accessible to me