Freedom of expression in India Quotes

“Wikipedia: Freedom of expression in India”

“This present-day effect of Section 295A could easily convince the scholars to sign a petition against this undeniably despotic and un-secular law.”

“When coordinated acts of violence are justified as the inevitable result of hurt feelings, legal precautions against violent displays of religious passion may be said to have backfired.”

“India's constitution represents the second type. A list of limitations is attached directly to the freedom of expression clause. The list includes expression that interferes with the sovereignty and integrity of India....”

“Every ban and censorship hurt. But banishment hurts the most. Banishment took away the ground from beneath my feet. What I need now most is a firm footing to stand up somewhere to fight for the freedom of expression. I was banished from both East and West Bengal.”

“Do we realise how that hastily-ordered ban [of the book The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie] has changed India forever? .... When the Government promptly submitted to this illiterate hysteria, it convinced [Hindus] that secularism had become a code phrase for Muslim appeasement.”

“After the Babri structure came down, Shri N. Ram thundered at a conference in Delhi that the print media owed it to the nation as much as to itself to black out fully statements and activities of the Hindutva brigade.”

“The point about Khomeini's fatwa is that it has worked: it has intimidated into silence scholars and writers all over the world. And the agitation against Hasan will work too: it took three years for a Muslim scholar to say as much - or, as little - as he did. It will take twice that many years for another one to say half as much.”

“The murder of Shraddhanada finally made the British rulers turn this attitude into law: “In 1927, section 295A was enacted to extend the ease with which ‘wounding religious feelings’ by verbal acts could be prosecuted.” Apart from punishing the murderer, they sought to punish Shraddhanada as well, retro-actively and postumously....”

“The association of sentiment and violence enshrined in section 295A was not only a product of concerns with law and order; it was also the result of a critical view of religious proselytizing. Section 295A was intended to provide a legal tool to restrain the religious criticism associated with proselytizing by the Arya Samaj.”

“The association of sentiment and violence enshrined in section 295A was not only a product of concerns with law and order; it was also the result of a critical view of religious proselytizing. Section 295A was in- tended to provide a legal tool to restrain the religious criticism associated with proselytizing by the Arya Samaj.”

“In India, the notion that to be truly tolerant in religion is to refrain from criticism of religion is a widespread secularist ideal. But this ideal has long been conjoined with the assumption that the party criticized will be unable to contain violent reaction. One result has been to give strategic value to violence as a way of proving the point.”

“And the situation in India has been getting worse over the years. Imagine one of us - who happens to be a Hindu - writing today, [...] There would be a howl - "fascism," "cultural imperalism" - and demands that the book be kept out of schools and universities. Yet the passage is Swami Vivekananda's - and he makes the point repeatedly in almost identical words.”

“Because religion is “rooted in the sentiments,” the judge concluded, religious debate is likely to provoke a riot, and that is all it can do. Religious debate is pointless and therefore unjustifiable; the right publicly to controvert arguments therefore does not properly extend to religion. To enter into religious debate is nothing but a provocation, an act calculated to arouse hatred. Therefore, it is intolerable.”

“Whoever, with deliberate and malicious intention of outraging the religious feelings of any class of citizens of India, by words, either spoken or written, or by signs or by visible representations or otherwise, insults or attempts to insult the religion or the religious beliefs of that class, shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to three years, or with fine, or with both.”

“And no one has contributed to making these things work, to smothering free inquiry and speech in this vital sphere as the liberals and secularists. We supported the ban on Rushdie's book at that time, writes a leading commentator, as we knew the reactions the book would provoke.
Does that "prudence" not go to the fundamentalists to work up a fury each time they want to have their way? Is that not what they are doing now?”

“In 1927, section 295A was enacted to extend the ease with which “wounding religious feelings” by verbal acts could be prosecuted. The purpose was to curb religious violence by curbing provocative speech. But the strategic field the law put into place worked differently: it extended the strategic value of demonstrating that passions had been aroused that threatened the public peace, in order to induce the government to take legal action against one’s opponents. Section 295A thus gave a fillip to the politics of religious sentiment.”

“For example in Pakistan, as recently as October 31, 1991, all the five judges of the Highest Islamic Court ruled that the punishment for defiling the Rasul was death and not life imprisonment as the prevailing penal law provided. But in countries like India where the Shariat law no longer prevails, but where Muslim opinion counts, any critical discussion of the Prophet and Islam is regarded as lacking in good taste. It is unsecular, a great lapse from accepted ideological morality. Critical writings are as a rule edited out and even often banned.”

“Imagine a scholar today referring to the "obvious defects of the Koran," to the "crudities of the Koran". (...) Imagine a scholar writing this today - the book could be pounded on, effigies of the author burned…Yet the sentences are from that most effusive - and one of the shallowest - apologies of Islam: M N Roy's The Historical Role of Islam. In brief, the situation has worsened over the decades. No one today could write even this much, and it is only the good fortune that our people do not read these older books which allows them to continue in circulation.”

“If some people do not like a representation of art, there are other ways to counter it. I never support violent attack on artistic freedom. I also do not support the trend of issuing fatwa. But, there are politicians, who support or protest on the basis of religion. Why are rules being tweaked for one particular community in Bengal? Why did Mamata Banerjee’s government never allow me to work there, allow my books to be published? Freedom of expression, the most important character of a democracy, is always under attack for vested political interest. Nobody criticises things neutrally.”