![]() In what follows I trace the regulation of what Indian legal language describes as " hurt religious sentiments " to its colonial origin, demonstrating that historically, the mandate of rulers has been to favor the powerful by reinforcing their capacity to silence the weak. After all, not all offensive speech is challenged, and not all challenges result in successful silencing of the putative offender, as was the case with Wendy Doniger's book, The Hindus: An Alternative History. But the abstraction comes at the price of bracketing out the specific economy of forces within which freedom of speech is regulated in India. ![]() There is a degree of valuable analytic abstraction to this discourse, which allows scholars and free speech advocates to compare the Doniger case with instances of the censorship of writing and art earlier in Indian history (for example, with the Rushdie affair Malik 2014), and with cases elsewhere in the world. ![]() ![]() Commentary on the Doniger affair has focused overwhelmingly on the principle of freedom of speech and the illiberal character of censorship (Shainin 2014). ![]()
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