Indian law promotes arbitrary removal and blocking of websites, website content, and online services —making it much easier than getting offline printed speech removed Without getting into questions of what should and should not be unlawful speech, let's take a look at how Indian law promotes arbitrary removal and blocking of websites, website content, and online services, and how it makes it much easier than getting offline printed speech removed. --Pranesh Prakash...

Political parties shout from rooftops that politics should be delinked from criminals, but a look at their nominees for Phase I of the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections makes it clear that both are inseparable and, in fact, two sides of the same coin. As many as 109 (out of the 284 analysed) candidates have declared in their affidavits that they are facing criminal cases and 46 of them have been Booked...

Here is a fundamental question to friends and supporters of Salman Rushdie: Is the right to speech and expression absolute, without any restrictions, in any democratic society? The right to freedom of expression is recognised as a human right under Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Article 19 goes on to say that the exercise of this right carries “special duties and responsibilities” and may “therefore be...

-The Indian Express   Salman Rushdie on Thursday got support from Vikram Seth, who said the controversy at the Jaipur Literature Festival was “because of power, politics and misuse of religion”. Speaking at the first Kolkata Literary Meet, organised as a part of the 36th Kolkata Book Fair, Seth said it was ironic that an event just a few days before the Republic Day went on to prove that everything it celebrates about...

Questionable drug trials on mentally challenged persons by doctors in Indore emphasise the need for strict enforcement of medical ethics. IN what appears to be a page out of Robin Cook's medical thriller, government and private doctors in Indore, Madhya Pradesh, reportedly carried out clinical trials of various medicines on some 233 patients who had gone to them seeking psychiatric treatment. As in Cook's famous Book Coma, in which a medical...