A Story of Censorship: How the Right to Take Offense is Shrinking Free Speech in India

CASI Seminar

CASI Spring 2014 Visiting Fellow

Anuradha Raman
Senior Associate Editor, Political Bureau, Outlook Magazine
Center for the Advanced Study of India
3600 Market Street, Suite 560 (5th floor)
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA 19104

 

 

 

About the Speaker:
Anuradha Raman is a Senior Associate Editor with the Political Bureau of Outlook magazine, New Delhi. She has written several articles on the media and the social sector with special emphasis on education and caste in India. She has also assisted in a study paper on Mapping Digitization in India in 2012 by the Open Society Foundations, which maps changes affecting the democratic service delivery of news on political, economic, and social affairs.

About the Lecture:
What does it mean to take offense to a book, music, work of art, film, or a play? As more and more people in India take offense to created works of art, the demand for banning them has increased. How does censorship or bans work in India? Who censors?  And on whose behalf is a work censored? Does a work once censored remain banned forever? In this presentation, Anuradha Raman will look at the different groups or communities who take offense to a work of art and examine what this means for free speech, a constitutional right guaranteed to every individual. She will also examine those whose works are banned. Using traditional reportage, interviews, and the Right to Information Act, she will attempt to throw light on the process of censorship, examining the linkages between the state, the court, the offended parties, and the individual’s right to free speech.

[Event Flyer]

The Nand & Jeet Khemka Distinguished Lecture Series is an endowed public program of the Center for the Advanced Study of India (CASI). Launched in the 2007-08 academic year, and made possible through the generous support of the Nand & Jeet Khemka Foundation, the series brings renowned India specialists to the Penn community and serves as a critical forum for analyzing and understanding the complex economic, political, social, and cultural changes that the world’s largest democracy is experiencing, as well as the challenges that lie ahead.
The Saluja Global Fellows Program has been made possible by the generous gift from Vishal Saluja ENG’89 W’89. CASI was excited to launch the program during the 2022–23 academic year, coinciding with the Center’s 30th Anniversary. This new program enables CASI to invite eminent leaders and rising experts on contemporary India preferably from the fields of media, culture, law, and contemporary history to be in residence for one to two weeks at CASI.