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A Constitutional loophole allows the state, influenced by religious groups and business interests, to go on a censorship spree

In 1988, India became the first country to ban The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie, following pressure from leaders of the Muslim community. Today, India continues its banning spree, reflecting the deep and growing unease with the freedom to express, an unease which goes back to the time when the Constitution was 17 months old. Since then, twenty-five books have been officially banned, including Joseph Lellywelds Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle with India, James Laines Shivaji: Hindu King in Islamic India, and Aubrey Menens The Ramayana.

One might have thought that those who fought hard for Indias freedom would have also fought for the right to free speech in the framing of the Constitution. Yet, unlike Americas First Amendment, which imposed restrictions on the state from curbing free speech, such restrictions were not put in place in the First Amendment to the Constitution of India.

Indias First Amendment, vigorously contested in Parliament by both the Left and Right parties, allowed the state to make laws in the interests of security, friendly relations with foreign states, public order, decency or morality or in relation to contempt of court, and defamation or incitement to an offence.

Since the 1950s, there has been a shift in who calls for bans. Unlike the state which exercised its right to ban books publishers, religious groups, caste groups, and corporates have claimed offence and sought bans on not only books, but also films, plays, and music. In many ways, the First Amendment, has also legitimised the peoples right to take offence and seek bans.

Over the past three months, five books have disappeared from Indian bookstores books on corporates, religion, and caste.

The pulping of all copies of The Hindus: An Alternative History by Wendy Doniger, put the focus back on who seeks a ban. Reliance, the largest business house in India, brought a legal suit against the authors of Gas Wars: Crony Capitalism and the Ambanis, and has asked them to withdraw the book or face criminal and civil charges for defamation.

In 1991, as India embarked on economic reforms, two things were happening almost simultaneously.

As William Mazarella says in Censorium: Many explained the censorship struggles of this period as symptoms of a clash between two formations: on one side, the process of globalisation and economic liberalisation that brought a deluge of mass communication and, on the other side, the rise to mainstream power of an aggressively conservative form of Hindu nationalism the intensification of censorship was one outcome.

However, Hindu nationalism was just one aspect of this intolerance. A whole new cast of characters has appeared on the scene, taking offence to everything. The state has played a willing accomplice in the ban game, and courts decisions have often not helped.

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Indias unease with free speech