Sedition in Liberal Democracies

Sedition in Liberal Democracies PDF Author: Anushka Singh
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019909182X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 444

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Book Description
Examining the relationship between sedition and liberal democracies, particularly in India, this book looks at the biography of sedition laws, its contradictory position against free speech, and democratic ethics. Recent sedition cases registered in India show that the law in its wide and diverse deployment was used against agitators in a community-based pro-reservation movement, group of university students for their alleged ‘anti-national’ statements, anti-liquor activists, and anti-nuclear movement, to name a few. Set against its contemporary use, this book has used sedition as a lens to probe the fate of political speech in liberal democracy. The lived reality of the law of sedition in changing anthropological sites is juxtaposed with its positivist existence. Anushka Singh uses a comparative framework keeping in focus the Indian experience backed by fieldwork in Haryana, Maharashtra, and Delhi, and includes a comparative perspective from England, the USA, and Australia to contribute to debates on sedition within liberal democracies at large, especially in the wake of the proliferation of counter-terror legislations.

Sedition in Liberal Democracies

Sedition in Liberal Democracies PDF Author: Anushka Singh
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019909182X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 444

Get Book Here

Book Description
Examining the relationship between sedition and liberal democracies, particularly in India, this book looks at the biography of sedition laws, its contradictory position against free speech, and democratic ethics. Recent sedition cases registered in India show that the law in its wide and diverse deployment was used against agitators in a community-based pro-reservation movement, group of university students for their alleged ‘anti-national’ statements, anti-liquor activists, and anti-nuclear movement, to name a few. Set against its contemporary use, this book has used sedition as a lens to probe the fate of political speech in liberal democracy. The lived reality of the law of sedition in changing anthropological sites is juxtaposed with its positivist existence. Anushka Singh uses a comparative framework keeping in focus the Indian experience backed by fieldwork in Haryana, Maharashtra, and Delhi, and includes a comparative perspective from England, the USA, and Australia to contribute to debates on sedition within liberal democracies at large, especially in the wake of the proliferation of counter-terror legislations.

Offend, Shock, or Disturb

Offend, Shock, or Disturb PDF Author: Gautam Bhatia
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199089523
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 452

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Book Description
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—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.

Authoritarian Legality in Asia

Authoritarian Legality in Asia PDF Author: Weitseng Chen
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108496687
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 409

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Book Description
Provides an intra-Asia comparative perspective of authoritarian legality, with a focus on formation, development, transition and post-transition stages.

The Truth Machines

The Truth Machines PDF Author: Jinee Lokaneeta
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 0472054392
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 263

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Book Description
Using case studies and the results of extensive fieldwork, this book considers the nature of state power and legal violence in liberal democracies by focusing on the interaction between law, science, and policing in India. The postcolonial Indian police have often been accused of using torture in both routine and exceptional criminal cases, but they, and forensic psychologists, have claimed that lie detectors, brain scans, and narcoanalysis (the use of “truth serum,” Sodium Pentothal) represent a paradigm shift away from physical torture; most state high courts in India have upheld this rationale. The Truth Machines examines the emergence and use of these three scientific techniques to analyze two primary themes. First, the book questions whether existing theoretical frameworks for understanding state power and legal violence are adequate to explain constant innovations of the state. Second, it explores the workings of law, science, and policing in the everyday context to generate a theory of state power and legal violence, challenging the monolithic frameworks about this relationship, based on a study of both state and non-state actors. Jinee Lokaneeta argues that the attempt to replace physical torture with truth machines in India fails because it relies on a confessional paradigm that is contiguous with torture. Her work also provides insights into a police institution that is founded and refounded in its everyday interactions between state and non-state actors. Theorizing a concept of Contingent State, this book demonstrates the disaggregated, and decentered nature of state power and legal violence, creating possible sites of critique and intervention.

The Great Repression

The Great Repression PDF Author: Chitranshul Sinha
Publisher: Penguin Random House India Private Limited
ISBN: 9353056187
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 219

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Book Description
The Indian Penal Code was formulated in 1860, three years after the first Indian revolt for independence. It was the country's first-ever codification of offences and penalties. But it was only in 1870 that Section 124A was slipped into Chapter VI ('Of Offences against the State'), defining the offence of 'Sedition' in a statute for the first time in the history of common law. When India became independent in 1947, the Constituent Assembly expressed strong reservations against sedition as a restriction on free speech as it had been used as a weapon against freedom fighters, many of whom were a part of the Assembly. Nehru vocally opposed it. And yet, not only has Section 124A survived, it has been widely used against popular movements and individuals speaking up against the establishment. Where did this law come from? How did it evolve? And what place does it have in a mature democracy? Concise, incisive and thoughtful, The Great Repression by Chitranshul Sinha, an advocate on record of the Supreme Court of India, tells the story of this outdated colonial-era law.

Populism and Liberal Democracy

Populism and Liberal Democracy PDF Author: Takis S. Pappas
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192574892
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 331

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Book Description
Populism and Liberal Democracy is the first book to offer a comprehensive theory about populism during both its emergence and consolidation phases in three geographical regions: Europe, Latin America and the United States. Based on the detailed comparison of all significant cases of populist governments (including Argentina, Greece, Peru, Italy, Venezuela, Ecuador, Hungary, and the U.S.) and two cases of populist failure (Spain and Brazil), each of the book's seven chapters addresses a specific question: What is populism? How to distinguish populists from non-populists? What causes populism? How and where does populism thrive? How do populists govern? Who is the populist voter? How does populism endanger democracy? If rising populism is a threat to liberal democratic politics, as this book clearly shows, it is only by answering the questions it posits that populism may be resisted successfully.

Liberal Fascism

Liberal Fascism PDF Author: Jonah Goldberg
Publisher: Crown Forum
ISBN: 0385517696
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
“Fascists,” “Brownshirts,” “jackbooted stormtroopers”—such are the insults typically hurled at conservatives by their liberal opponents. Calling someone a fascist is the fastest way to shut them up, defining their views as beyond the political pale. But who are the real fascists in our midst? Liberal Fascism offers a startling new perspective on the theories and practices that define fascist politics. Replacing conveniently manufactured myths with surprising and enlightening research, Jonah Goldberg reminds us that the original fascists were really on the left, and that liberals from Woodrow Wilson to FDR to Hillary Clinton have advocated policies and principles remarkably similar to those of Hitler's National Socialism and Mussolini's Fascism. Contrary to what most people think, the Nazis were ardent socialists (hence the term “National socialism”). They believed in free health care and guaranteed jobs. They confiscated inherited wealth and spent vast sums on public education. They purged the church from public policy, promoted a new form of pagan spirituality, and inserted the authority of the state into every nook and cranny of daily life. The Nazis declared war on smoking, supported abortion, euthanasia, and gun control. They loathed the free market, provided generous pensions for the elderly, and maintained a strict racial quota system in their universities—where campus speech codes were all the rage. The Nazis led the world in organic farming and alternative medicine. Hitler was a strict vegetarian, and Himmler was an animal rights activist. Do these striking parallels mean that today’s liberals are genocidal maniacs, intent on conquering the world and imposing a new racial order? Not at all. Yet it is hard to deny that modern progressivism and classical fascism shared the same intellectual roots. We often forget, for example, that Mussolini and Hitler had many admirers in the United States. W.E.B. Du Bois was inspired by Hitler's Germany, and Irving Berlin praised Mussolini in song. Many fascist tenets were espoused by American progressives like John Dewey and Woodrow Wilson, and FDR incorporated fascist policies in the New Deal. Fascism was an international movement that appeared in different forms in different countries, depending on the vagaries of national culture and temperament. In Germany, fascism appeared as genocidal racist nationalism. In America, it took a “friendlier,” more liberal form. The modern heirs of this “friendly fascist” tradition include the New York Times, the Democratic Party, the Ivy League professoriate, and the liberals of Hollywood. The quintessential Liberal Fascist isn't an SS storm trooper; it is a female grade school teacher with an education degree from Brown or Swarthmore. These assertions may sound strange to modern ears, but that is because we have forgotten what fascism is. In this angry, funny, smart, contentious book, Jonah Goldberg turns our preconceptions inside out and shows us the true meaning of Liberal Fascism.

Mobilizing the Marginalized

Mobilizing the Marginalized PDF Author: Amit Ahuja
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190916443
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
India's over 200 million Dalits, once called "untouchables," have been mobilized by social movements and political parties, but the outcomes of this mobilization are puzzling. Dalits' ethnic parties have performed poorly in elections in states where movements demanding social equality have been strong while they have succeeded in states where such movements have been entirely absent or weak. In Mobilizing the Marginalized, Amit Ahuja demonstrates that the collective action of marginalized groups--those that are historically stigmatized and disproportionately poor ED is distinct. Drawing on extensive original research conducted across four of India's largest states, he shows, for the marginalized, social mobilization undermines the bloc voting their ethnic parties' rely on for electoral triumph and increases multi-ethnic political parties' competition for marginalized votes. He presents evidence showing that a marginalized group gains more from participating in a social movement and dividing support among parties than from voting as a bloc for an ethnic party.

Agitation to Legislation

Agitation to Legislation PDF Author: Zoya Hasan
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199091862
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 227

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Book Description
The past few years have seen the street emerge as one of the most volatile and engaging sites of a politics in flux. Mass protests, widespread networks, and quick mobilization in the age of social media have instilled a new life in protests and agitations, engendering an entirely new brand of rights agenda in India today. Grassroots activism along with organized, collective action has influenced several landmark legislations, often resulting in progressive outcomes and policies. Agitation to Legislation finds that such a progression is not so sudden. It examines ways in which social mobilizations influence legislative trajectory, opening up modes of direct engagement between the state and its citizens, between the government and the governed. It simultaneously focuses on political actors and processes that help expand rights and accountability and at the same time resist any attempt to increase representation of under-represented groups. Positive outcomes have depended on political responses and party strategies, either appropriating or reinforcing or disregarding the scale and intensity of public protests and collective action.

Republic of Rhetoric

Republic of Rhetoric PDF Author: ABHINAV. CHANDRACHUD
Publisher: Penguin Enterprise
ISBN: 9780143455646
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 384

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Book Description
Exploring the legal and political history of India, from the British period to the present, Republic of Rhetoric examines the right to free speech and it argues that the enactment of the Constitution in 1950 did not make a significant difference to the freedom of expression in India. Abhinav Chandrachud suggests that colonial-era restrictions on free speech, like sedition, obscenity, contempt of court, defamation and hate speech, were not merely retained but also strengthened in independent India. Authoritative and compelling, this book offers lucid and cogent arguments that have not been substantially advanced before by any of the leading thinkers on the right of free speech in India.