“Perumal Murugan is dead,” wrote the Tamil writer and teacher Perumal Murugan after his books were burnt, his family displaced, his safety threatened, and his career made uncertain. The Madras High Court has brought Murugan to life again. His right to write was upheld. More importantly, his right to offend, without which the right to free speech means little, was upheld. And, crucially, the state was reminded that it is charged with the obligation to resist the illegal demands of censorious mobs, not to appease them.
Tag Archives: Macaulay
[Excerpt] Sedition lingers on in India, refusing to go away, silencing students, doctors and writers today as it did nationalist leaders a century ago. The increasing use of sedition in the twenty-first century, no matter the government in power, has set India upon a dangerous, backwards-facing trajectory.
[Excerpt] The irony of Subramanian Swamy’s newest challenge to India’s hate speech and blasphemy laws is lost on many of his supporters. The same laws were used to prosecute Wendy Doniger and harass Maqbool F. Hussain, as well as Shirin Dalvi and others who published images depicting the Prophet Muhammad.
Free Speech | Privacy | Technology 