“Censorship in the Indian Context”

“Censorship in India is mostly focused on ensuring that anti-national (which is taken to mean
anti-government in many instances) sentiments are not propagated and proliferated in the
media and other forms of information sources, such as the radio, newspapers, and Internet.
Also common is the “obscenity” argument, leading to a removal of supposedly indecent or
immoral material from films and books, as well as a short-lived “porn ban” that blocked
access to pornographic websites in the nation for a couple of days, to severe backlash from
the public.”

This censorship being practiced by the government is of two different kinds. “The former
type, characterized by accusations of being an “anti-national” as seen in the JNU incident,
reeks of insecurity in one’s own position of power, resulting in the need to censor dissent. In
another incident, the government revoked the licenses of three news broadcasting channels,
accusing them of having “cast aspersions on the integrity of India’s judicial system”, after
they ran stories criticizing the hanging of Yakub Memon.”1 The government’s inability to
handle dissent in a mature and reasoned manner leads one to believe that political censorship
is practiced by those States which have a fragile hold on power.

The second type of censorship has been looked into in detail in the previous section regarding
the hate speech law in Germany. This sort of censorship is inherently paternalistic and
presupposes that the State knows the objective standard against which “obscenity” must be
measured and thus, this standard is applied to the rest of the country. However, the
government was unsuccessful in implementing this obscenity-based standard, as it was found
that the Supreme Court had already held previously that it was the fundamental right of a
citizen to watch pornography in the privacy of his own room.

While the freedom of speech and expression is enshrined in the Indian Constitution 2, this is
not an absolute right. Like many other democratic states, this right is subject to riders in the
interest of public order and decency. 3 However, this notion of decency is open to
interpretation, and thus leads to varying conclusions. Notions of decency vary with the time,
as well as the inclination of the government at the Centre, thus leading to draconian and
narrow thresholds for obscene material when there is a conservative party ruling. Thus, an
1
PTI, 3 channels get show-cause notice on coverage of Yakub hanging, THE HINDU (August 8, 2015), available
athttp://www.thehindu.com/news/national/3-channels-get-showcause-notice-on-coverage-of-yakub-
hanging/article7516179.ece (Last accessed on 9 April, 2016).
2
3
Art. 19(2), THE CONSTITUTION OF INDIA, 1950.
analysis of the censorship prevailing in the Indian context with regard to media and films
inherently reduces to an analysis of the notions of decency in the nation.

On the other hand, the political censorship being practiced by the State is more of an ad-hoc
sort of measure being taken by the government. “There are no formal censorship laws
governing the press in India, which has led to it gaining accolades from various freedom-of-
press agencies.4 However, what we see in the present instance is that the government is not
resorting to any sort of legal machinery to advocate for such censorship; instead, it indirectly
censors content it finds distasteful to its goals by either revoking licenses of the offending
media channels, or simply blocking such websites without due process.”

With regard to legislative material, apart from the Constitution, there are various laws
governing free speech and its limits. The Indian Penal Code allows curbing of free speech on
the grounds of “outraging religious sentiments, making statements creating or promoting
enmity, hatred or ill-will between classes on grounds of religion, caste, language or race”. 5
“The Information Act, 2000 seeks to curb the propagation of similar hate speech online, but
is often misused to silence dissidents and their posts on social media. 6 We see that these
legislations, while having been enacted with the aim to promote peace and order in society,
have been distorted by ruling powers to achieve their own ends of absolute rule.”

Thus, we see that regulative censorship has played a limited role in India, possibly due to
citizens’ sustained efforts to ensure that external impositions of morality are not forced upon
them. However, for the longest time, institutional efforts at constitutive censorship went
unnoticed. This censorship took place via the efforts of the Film Censor Board of India,
which has become particularly narrow minded in its view on obscenity in recent times. 7 “By
censoring portions of films that have been deemed “obscene”, this censor board is invariably
interfering with citizens’ right to artistic expression. Even when the draconian censor board
deems a movie to be suitable for adults only, it decides to cut certain scenes from the movie
by assuming suo moto cognizance and assuming that certain scenes are so scandalous that not
even adults can be allowed to view them and make judgments for themselves.This happens

4
Freedom House, Freedom of the Press 2015, (2015), available at https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-
press/2015/india (Last accessed on 9 April, 2016).
5
Sec. 499, Indian Penal Code, 1860.
6
N.S. Nappinai, A Gross Misuse of the IT Act by Mumbai Police,THE WIRE (14 November, 2015), available at
http://thewire.in/2015/07/14/mumbai-polices-gross-misuse-of-the-it-act-6390/ (Last accessed on 9 April, 2016).
7
S.R. Praveen, Directors out against CBFC directives, THE HINDU (31 August, 2015), available at
http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/tp-kerala/directors-out-against-cbfc-
directives/article7598642.ece (Last accessed on 9 April, 2016).
particularly regularly with respect to foreign films released in India. Simple swear words, like
“fuck”, which may have varied meanings, in different contexts, is effectively scrubbed out of
a film and its subtitles.”

What these notions of obscenity tell us is that ideas of morality and decency in India are still
equivalent to that of Victorian England, where all allusions to sexuality were feared and
deemed to be unacceptable for public viewing.Norms of sexuality in India are conservative,
with a majority considering there to be a significant connection between sexuality and
morality. “However, one must consider whether or not this sort of protectionism is really
morally harmful. Exposing children to sex and violence at a young age can have debilitating
effects on their psyche, leading to stunted mental and emotional growth. In order to ensure
that the right kind of material is viewed by the appropriate audience, censorship may become
necessary. However, once again, this exhibits a paternalistic attitude.”