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-liquoractivists, 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.

Anushka Singh is assistant professor at the School of Law, Governance and Citizenship, Ambedkar University Delhi, India.

• Acknowledgements


• List of Abbreviations
  


• Introduction: Liberal Democracy and Free Speech


• 1. Political Offences and Speech Crimes: Comparing Legal Regimes


• 2. Sedition and Western Liberal Democracies: The Past and the Present


• 3. Resistance, Suppression, and Patriotism: Sedition in Colonial India


• 4. Sedition and the Judicial Discourse in Postcolonial India


• 5. Caste, Class, Community, and the Everyday Tales of Law


• 6. Indian Democracy and the 'Moment of Contradiction'


• Conclusion: The Life of a Law and Contradictions of Liberal Democracies
  


• Bibliography


• Index


• About the Author