Faculty Seminar | ‘Hate Speech, Law, and Platform Regulation in India’

At this week’s faculty seminar, Dr. Siddharth Narrain, Assistant Professor of Law, will present his paper titled ‘Hate Speech, Law, and Platform Regulation in India.’

Abstract

In this paper, Siddharth provides a contextual account of the distinctive ways in which the regulation of hate speech has developed in the Indian context. Some of the key characteristics of the development of hate speech law in India include a) its colonial history that has led to an over reliance on  a public order rationale for limitations on speech and b) inconsistencies, arbitrary use by government agencies. He argues that there is an urgent need for rethinking hate speech regulation in India from a public order centred discourse to one that tied anti-discrimination framework that considers the structural and historical context of discrimination in India.