Offend, Shock, or Disturb

The book focuses on the role of courts in understanding and interpreting the constitutional right to freedom of speech and expression, interrogating judicial premises and reasoning from the point of view of the text, structure, history of the Constitution, the philosophies of speech, as well as the reasoning of similarly-placed constitutional courts.

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Offend, Shock, or Disturb is a comprehensive examination of free speech under the Indian Constitution. It explores Indian free speech jurisprudence from a doctrinal, comparative, and philosophical perspective.
Taking as its point of departure the constitutional guarantee of the freedom of speech and expression under Articles 19(1)(a) and 19(2) of the Constitution of India, the book discusses, clause by clause, the development of law from colonial times to present-day controversies.
Issues relating to public order, sedition, obscenity and pornography, hate speech, film and online censorship, privacy and defamation, the contempt of court, the nature of speech and the relationship between free speech and economic structure, and the inter-relationships between them have been comprehensively examined. As free speech campaigns gain intensity by the day, the book presents the myriad understandings and limitations of the free speech law, and suggests possible pathways for the future.