Not So Stellar In Protecting Personal

Context:  While the Constitution of India permits reasonable restrictions on speech on a variety of stated grounds, many laws that impose such restrictions are accompanied by various issues.

Analyzing the limitations to free speech in India

• Criminal defamation: By making defamation a punishable offence, the state imposes a chilling effect on all manners of legitimate speech.
  • It is for this reason that almost every democratic nation of the world has revoked laws criminalizing defamation.
  • In Priya Ramani Case, the Delhi court recognized that a woman’s right to dignity superseded any claims over reputation.
• Sedition: defined as any act that brings or attempts to bring into hatred or contempt or excites or attempts to excite disaffection towards the government. (Vestige of colonialism)
  • It was incorporated by the British government into the Indian Penal Code with the explicit aim of repressing all forms of dissent against the regime.
  • The offence is still prevalent in India despite the Supreme Court ruling in 1962, which held that only seditious action that had the “tendency to disrupt public order, as prosecutable.
  • In the Disha Ravi bail case, the Court stated that in a democracy, the right to dissent is fundamental.
• Blasphemy laws: The laws permit governments to target acts that so much as offend a person’s belief, dislodging, in the process, the very foundation of free expression.
  • Section 153A - deals with a speech that seeks to promote enmity between different communities.
  • Sec­tion 295A - criminalizes speech that outrages religious feelings, are also vestiges of colonialism.
  • Liberty of individual compromised: In Arnab Manoranjan Goswami vs the State of Maharashtra, the Court warned against the use of the criminal law as “a ruse for targeted harassment”.