Temporary Bans and Bad Laws: TheAarakshanBan and the Logics of Censorship in Contemporary India

Abstract

This article traces several sites of film regulation in contemporary India including the censor board, street protestors, television commentators, and state governments. Among these sites, the article focuses on the quasi-legal banning of the Hindi film Aarakshan (2011) by the Mayawati-led state government of Uttar Pradesh. Although the state government purported to be securing public order by banning the film, critics vociferously objected to the ban as overstepping the limits of state power and violating freedom of speech. I argue that while the mainstream debate was delimited by competing constitutional claims and the ban was motivated by a display of support for a local Dalit constituency, both operated within a censorial governmentality driven by an ideal of representative censorship.

Understating South Asia interculturally and communicatively: What the contemporary scholarship tells us

“…The issue of censorship was addressed in a couple of articles. These articles studied several aspects of censorship, including freedom of speech, sensorial governmentality, the role of state power, and public contestation, particularly in the backdrop of political anxiety and upheaval, and increased media activism in the contemporary era (Rajkhowa, 2015; Schulz, 2015).…”