Censorship and the Politics of Micro-Fascism

Abstract

Although censorship has classically been understood as a vertical problem of repressive state laws being used to curb individual freedoms, there has been a gradual paradigm shift in the nature of censorship with right-wing religious organizations, political leaders, and overzealous individuals using the law to curb dissent or to proscribe speech that they disagree with. The infamous Dinanath Batra who used the laws to ensure that Penguin withdrew Wendy Doniger’s book is symptomatic of a phenomenon in which laws are used horizontally against other citizens. In the aftermath of the BJP’s electoral victory, we have already seen the law being used against individuals who have been critical of Narendra Modi. This article examines how hate speech legislations may be systematically abused by right-wing organizations to create chilling effects and the dangers that they pose to democratic dissent.