Speech In India Research Articles

Social media and the vitiating public sphere: Role of digital assemblages in the production of hate speech in India

In the digital era, communities with common interests interacting on social media often lead to varying mobilizations. Augmented with an imagined sense of community (nation), these interactions fuel ultra-nationalist sentiments. This leads to the production of communal violence that targets minorities. The increase in anti-Muslim reportage done by mainstream media in recent years has also legitimized the systemic othering of Muslims. Calls for violence and genocide against Muslims have now become the new normal in India. In this light, social media’s rise signifies a tectonic shift resulting in the creation of a majoritarian digital Hindu identity that facilitates the state’s goal of institutionalized hate. In this article, we try to evaluate how the democratization of social media platforms functions as a tool for political mobilization and how, when exploited by digital hate-driven communities, this results in violence against minorities. Through a comprehensive analysis of such digital assemblies in the Indian context, we seek to acknowledge this culture of hate that is taking digital India by storm.

'Online Hate Speech in India: Legal Reforms and Social Impact on Social Media Platforms'

'Online Hate Speech in India: Legal Reforms and Social Impact on Social Media Platforms'

Coping with Hate: Exploring Indian Journalists’ Responses to Online Harassment

ABSTRACT In India, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) employs a digital army of right-wing supporters to harass journalists who are critical of the party's Hindu-nationalist ideology. As a result, the country's press freedom rankings have significantly declined over the past decade. While scholars have examined the discursive strategies used by online Hindu nationalists against journalists, how reporters cope with these attacks remains unknown. This study investigates how Indian media professionals perceive the personal and professional consequences of harassment for themselves and the coping strategies they use to combat digital hate. In-depth interviews with 24 journalists reveal that they employ mechanisms such as strategic social disconnection, formation of alliance networks, and working for non-profit news sites and international media organizations to overcome the effects of social media harassment. The analysis also highlights that commercial media that are subservient to the Modi government failed to protect their reporters, while independent media outlets provide much more support to their employees. The findings underscore the need for social media companies to promptly respond to content flagged by journalists and allocate additional resources to moderate hate speech in India's local languages to safeguard journalists from sustained online abuse.

Tracing the Contours of Hate Speech in India in the Pandemic Year: The Curious Case of Online Hate Speech against Muslims and Dalits During the Pandemic

Though India is no stranger to either epidemics or hate speech, the COVID-19 crisis brought to the surface many of the pre-existing schisms and prejudices that subsequently led to both the Muslim minority community and the Dalit community being cast as miasmic and constant agitators against the central government. In the case of hate speech against the Muslim community, it has led to a peculiar situation wherein the invisible but pervasive Islamophobia that has been plaguing the country from the colonial times has risen it ugly head particularly across regional news channels and social media networks, making the phenomena hyper-visible. The Hindutva 1 politicians from the extreme right parties have been indulging in spreading anti-Muslim propaganda, moulding the image of the Muslim community as not only disease-bearers and super-spreaders of COVID-19 virus but also as being anti-national, as the central government has proclaimed ‘a war against the COVID virus’ ( The Print, 2020, 26 April). During the initial spread of the virus throughout the country, there was an increasing tendency to show the Muslim community as intentionally spreading the disease or as being ignorant of current medical practices, with multiple TV channels airing the views that the Tablighi Jamaat event (a religious congregation held in March 2020) was marked as a super-spreader event, and with multiple politicians engaging in rumour-mongering and hate-speech against the Muslims, framing the community as a miasmic community that needs to be cleared from India. On the other hand, the hate speech against Dalits in India is much more nuanced, indirect and layered. It began as WhatsApp and Facebook messages extolling the caste system and justifying the discriminatory practice of untouchability 2 using the logic of social distancing and progressed to painting Dalits and Dalit spaces as unhygienic disease-scapes. This consequently led to the denial of livelihoods to thousands of domestic workers and unskilled workers who belonged to lower caste groups as they found themselves without jobs as most middle caste upper caste families and business owners fired their employees without notice. The study involves a hermeneutical analysis of news reports of the spread of COVID from newspapers and electronic media in English as well as interviews with at least 100 members of groups on social media (WhatsApp and Facebook) that propagate extremely communal and casteist material.

Faking news, hiding data: New assaults on freedom of speech in India

Faking news, hiding data: New assaults on freedom of speech in India

Right to Commercial Speech in India: Construing Constitutional Provisions Harmoniously in Favor of Public Health.

This article examines the right to commercial speech that has been read into the right to freedom of speech and expression under Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution of India. Restrictions on this right are only permitted if they come within the ambit of the exhaustive list of reasonable restrictions under Article 19(2), under which public health is notably absent. Nevertheless, through the doctrine of harmonious construction, the Indian judiciary have adopted a purposive interpretation to circumvent the omission of public health by carving up freedom of commercial speech into two parts: protected speech which furthers public interest and unprotected speech which is purely commercial. Moreover, the Indian courts have construed these provisions in light of the right to life under Article 21 and the health-related Directive Principles of State Policy under Part IV of the Constitution. This article concludes that judicial creativity in India has consistently been used in favor of protecting public health.

Towards Holistic Regulation of ‘Online Hate Speech’

India, as with other jurisdictions, has been struggling to deal with the issue of how to regulate hate speech in the online ecosystem. Regulatory responses have usually seen demands for either new criminal laws to be implemented or for intermediaries to ‘do more’ to make the online ecosystem safer. In this context, this paper provides an overview of regulatory interventions that have been proposed to deal with the issue of online hate speech in India, and argues that attempts to find a ‘silver bullet’ solution are unlikely to bear fruit. The focus on either creating new criminal offences or casting substantive policing obligations on intermediaries may lead to inequitable results and unintended consequences. These could negatively affect the very groups these interventions aim to protect. The issue of regulating online hate speech is complex. Therefore, we suggest that regulatory interventions must take into account the range of modalities available, including other legal alternatives and alternatives to 'law-based methods', that are explored in the paper; and focus on process improvements.

Online Hate Speech: A Critical Appraisal of law relating Electronic Evidence in India

We are living in the era of technology and internet is gift of technology. The advantage of internet is blessings but misuse of internet results into the headache. Online hate speech is one of the issues of the modern era. The legal mechanism is also going through big challenge regarding the protection of online hate speech in India. Section 66 A of the Information Technology Act, 2002, was struck down by the Hon’ble Supreme Court and it created challenge for the protection of online hate speech. We have seen number of incidence where fake news/objectionable materials/hate speech/rumors are put through computer resources and communication devices. It had spread hate and violence in the large number of cases. The researcher put light on the notion of hate speech and discuss in detail the international law, domestic law and judicial pronouncements. Civilized Society is facing enormous crisis to deal with online hate speech. The researcher is examining the existing legal mechanism on online hate speech with the relevant provisions of the law and judgments. Electronic evidence is vital to judge the online hate speech. The legal mechanism and judicial pronouncements on the electronic evidence are scrutinized in

Contextualising Hate Speech: A Study of India And Malaysia

Hate speech is a verbal expression, which is designed to promote hatred based on race, religion, ethnicity and violence between different communities . Hate speech are systematically used to lash hatred towards minorities and for inflaming regional, religious and ethnic passion. It has been repeatedly observed that inflaming and deleterious words have been used by people of influence to further their vested interests and incite violence. Indian laws as well as Malaysian laws forbid anyone from making hate speeches that disturb the communal harmony and creates discord among the people. When the issue of suppression of hate speech comes to purview, the notion of reasonable restriction comes into picture. Consequent debate narrows down to two sharply contrasting opinions ie: restraints v. freedom of speech and expression. It is difficult to balance both divergent opinions. Article 19(1) of the Indian Constitution, provides for the freedom of speech and expression but also places reasonable restrictions under Article 19(2) on the grounds of public order, decency and morality. Similarly, Article 10 of the Malaysian Constitution empowers the Malaysian citizens with the freedom of speech and expression subject to restrictions imposed by the Parliament. Whenever these contradictory opinions are presented in front of the court, even the Apex court of the respective countries has shown its reluctance towards curbing such communally charged statements. Even if the judgment restraining hate speech is pronounced, it often comes too late, sometimes after the damage has already been inflicted, thus failing to exert any deterrent effect. By using doctrinal research methods,this paper a) discusses the terminology of hate speech; b) analyzes different legal provisions that deals with hate speech in India and Malaysia; and c) discusses non-legal solutions to the problem. This paper argues that although several legal provisions are available to curb hate speech, Alternative Dispute Resolution and counter speech may be used as alternative ways to address hate speech.

Free Speech in India

This work intends to share a sense of free speech regulation in India. It is divided into three parts: Part I considers the underlying socio-legal basis of the free speech laws and norms in India, Part II explores what free speech regulation comprises from the points of view of social norm, positive law, and normative law, and, finally, Part III looks at how free speech restrictions are actually implemented in the country.

Collective Conservatism and the Constituent Assembly Debates: The Case of Free Speech in India

This article outlines the conceptual foundation of India’s free speech regime by focusing on the debates of the Constituent Assembly (1946–1949), and traces the development of the Article 19 of the constitution, which guarantees all citizens the right to free speech and expression, albeit certain ‘reasonable restrictions’. While offering a synoptic account of the conservative side of its development—as framers negotiated the discrepancies between their imagined ideal and the existing, often-conflicting reality—the idea here is not to uncover some grand master plan of Indian democracy from which it has faltered, but to explore ways in which it might lend a fissure to violent outbursts of ‘hurt sentiments’ in contemporary India, which impinges upon the idea and enjoyment of free speech in general, and freedom of artists in particular.

The price of free speech in India today

The price of free speech in India today

The Evolution of the Constitutional Right to Free Speech in India (1800-1950): The Interplay of Universal and Particular Rationales

This paper seeks to provide a descriptive account of the evolution of free speech in colonial and post-independence India, while remaining alert to significant analytical considerations. The paper focuses on crucial periods in the evolution of Indian constitutional jurisprudence on the right to free speech. It starts its narrative with the introduction of the printing press in India in 1778 and the creation of the first Indian newspapers and newsletters in the early 19th century. The bulk of the paper focuses on the debates within the framers of the Constitution of India on the issue of free speech that occurred between 1947-50. The principal argument advanced in this paper is that while both universal and particularist arguments played vital roles in preparing the ground for public support for free speech and the eventual adoption of a constitutional right to free speech, there are specific phases where the dominance of one over the other was markedly felt. Broadly speaking, universal arguments for free speech were dominant during the colonial era, when intellectuals and nationalists drew on universal and comparative understandings (mixed often with local and particular reasons that played a lesser role) to advance arguments for free speech. By contrast, when the framers of Independent India began drafting the rights provisions, the overall influence of universal arguments for free speech was considerably moderated by the pressing demands of the social, political and economic conditions in mid-twentieth India, which led them to permit several grounds of restrictions of rights in response to such conditions. This is not to suggest, however, that universal influences were always towards expansion of free speech, or that particularlist influences were only towards restrictions on speech. As we will see, the story is more complex and some particularist justifications for embodying a strong free speech right in India were also advanced. This paper is very much work-in-progress and is part of a larger project that tries to understand post-colonial Indian constitutionalism against a wider historical trajectory, which in my view is often lost sight of, and is not emphasized enough, in contemporary scholarship on Indian constitutional law.

Inter-Religion Hate Speech in India: A Sociological Study on the Ambiguous Terminology of Secularism

Inter-Religion Hate Speech in India: A Sociological Study on the Ambiguous Terminology of Secularism