Freedom of speech and

expression

Legal essay submitted to

Mrs. Aruna hyde

(faculty: legal english)

Project submitted by

Ritu r nichani

Roll no.61

Semester one

HIDAYATULLAH NATIONAL LAW UNIVERSITY

RAIPUR, C.G.

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 TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 3

INTRODUCTION 4

Effects of the freedom of speech 6

Freedom of speech and article 19

of the constitution 7

Reasonable restrictions under article 19 8

Freedom of the press 10

Legal restrictions on the freedom of press 12

Freedom of expression 13

Freedom of artistic expression 14

Conclusion 15

References 16

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 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to my teacher, Mrs. Aruna Hyde and also to
Prof. C.M. Mukherjee for their unstinted support. The topic given to me for my legal essay
is one that is very close to my heart and I hope I have done justice to it.

Thank you, jusrists and masters of law for the expression of your ideas, thoughts and
immense amount of knowledge in the form of the various books, articles and opinions.
Without all of this, it would have been impossible for me to complete my project.

My gratitude also goes out to the staff and administration of HNLU for the infrastructure
in the form of our library and IT Lab that was a source of great help for the completion of
this project.

- Ritu R Nichani

(Semester one)

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 INTRODUCTION

When a child is born, he himself doesnt know to which caste or creed he belongs. His name
decides it to some extent. The seeds of racialism are planted in his pure heart and blank mind by
his parents. The society also pollute him with the dirty thoughts of how is he distinguished from
others on the basis of race, caste, boundary or even complexion.

The man himself tries to harm some other of its same kind just because that one is not alike to
him in caste or may be his complexion doesnt matches with his. He then overrules the fact that
all human beings are the creation of the same Almighty and thus he stands against himself.

This similar thing happened with Indians, a dark complexion breed in Australia, a native fair
complexion country, where the Indians were cruelly abused and maltreated on the name of color.
The main targets of racialism in Australia were Indian students who went there to seek higher
education in search of a good career option. Many of them were so ill-treated and abused
socially and mentally, that committing suicide seems them an easy and the only available
alternative. The threads of breath of many of them were halted to rest, all just because their
origins lie in different boundaries. Even the nephew of the Indian cricket star Harbhajan Singh
was traumatized and ultimately killed.

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 There were many protests and demonstrations against the racial attack on Indians in
Australia, both in India and Australia. Even the Prime Minister of Australia, Kevin Rudd assured
to provide security to the Indians.

The present need of the hour is to make people realize and enlighten that one should not
go against each other but should get united and stand against the evils like natural calamities,
terrorism, global warming, female feticide and thus make this world a better place for you and
for me and for the entire human race.

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 RACIALISM: Meaning, Nature and Evolution
Racialism is an emphasis on race or racial considerations.[1] Currently, racialism entails a belief
in the existence and significance of racial categories, but not necessarily that any absolute
hierarchy between the races has been demonstrated by a rigorous and comprehensive scientific
process. Racialists usually reject some claims of racial superiority (such as "racial supremacy"),
but may explicitly or implicitly subscribe to others, such as that races have acted in morally
superior or inferior ways, at least in certain instances or periods of history. Racialism is the basic
epistemological position that not only do races exist, but also that there are significant
differences between them. This is to be contrasted with racism, which also assumes that some
races are superior to others; or, in an altered meaning, refers to discrimination based on the
concept of race.

In the modern English language, racism is a broad category encompassing many separate claims
or impulses, such as chauvinism, identity politics, institutional racism, etc., and it is often used as
a pejorative epithet that many would want to avoid for various reasons. When the term
"racialism" is used, this is more commonly people describing themselves, or attempting a more
value-neutral terminology which is assumed to be more appropriate for (scientifically) objective
communication or analysis. Self-described racialists often wish to avoid many of the popular
associations of "racism" that are considered pejorative, or involve extremism or illegal activities,
such as: hatred, xenophobia, (malignant or forced) exploitation, separatism, racial supremacy,
mass murder (for the purpose of genocide), genocide denial, vigilantism (hate crimes, terrorism),
etc.

However, this distribution of meanings between the two terms used to be precisely inverse at the
time they were coined: The Oxford English Dictionary defined racialism as "belief in the
superiority of a particular race" and gives a 1907 quote as the first recorded use. The term racism
was defined by the OED as "[t]he theory that distinctive human characteristics and abilities are
determined by race", giving 1936 as the first recorded use. Additionally, the OED records racism
as a synonym of racialism: "belief in the superiority of a particular race". By the end of World
War II, racism had acquired the same supremacist connotations as racialism: racism now implied
racial discrimination, racial supremacism and a harmful intent.
Since the 1960s, some authors have introduced a new meaning for the less-current racialism:
Black civil rights activist W. E. B. Du Bois introduced racialism as having the same meaning as
racism had prior to WWII, i.e. the philosophical belief that differences exist between human

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races, be they biological, social, psychological or in the realm of the soul. He reserved the use of
racism to refer to the belief that one's particular race is superior to the others (viz., precisely the
inverse of the OED definitions).[2]

Cultural theorist Kwame Anthony Appiah criticised DuBois for this definition of racialism in
'My Father's House' (1992) where he defines racialism as "...the viewthat there are heritable
characteristics, possessed by members of our species, which allow us to divide them into a small
set of races, in such a way that all the members of these races share certain traits and tendencies
with each other that they do not share with members of any other race." Racial realism is term
similar to the current meaning of racialism.

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 RACIALISM: INDIAN PERSPECTIVE
Violence against Indians in Australia controversy

Indian students protesting on 31 May 2009, in Melbourne, blocking Swanston and

Flinders Streets

During 2009, the media of Australia, mostly in Melbourne, and India publicized reports of
crimes and robberies against Indians in Australia that were described as racially motivated
crimes. A subsequent Indian Government investigation concluded that 23 incidents involved
"racial overtones". There were 120,913 Indian students enrolled to undertake an Australian
qualification in 2009 and India was the second top-source country for Australias international
education industry.[1]

Rallies were organized in Melbourne and Sydney, and intense media coverage of the perceived
hate crimes commenced in India, which were mostly critical of Australia and Victoria Police.
The Australian government initially called for calm as it began an investigation into the crimes.
In June 2009, the Victoria Police Chief Commissioner, Simon Overland, stated that some of the
crimes were racist in nature, and others were opportunistic.[2]

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Assaults on Indians in Australia: Globalisation, recession
and renewed racism

Students protest against racist attacks and police inaction in Melbourne.

By the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation

June 4, 2009 -- The continuing spate of attacks and violence against Indians and Indian students
in particular in Australia has once again exploded the much-touted myth that globalisation
promotes and respects pluralism and multiculturalism. The response of the Australian
government has been shockingly muted, trying to cover up and even deny the racist dimensions
of the attacks, terming them as just routine robberies and muggings. If so, why do Indians
constitute a disproportionate share of the victims - 30% in Melbourne?

One of the important demands of the protesting Indian students is to make the records of the
assaults public -- which would bring out the actual extent and dimension of these racist crimes.
The least that the Australian government could have done in the wake of these attacks was to
unequivocally apologise; but far from that, the Victorian police have unleashed a brutal
crackdown by thrashing and arresting the peaceful student protesters agitating against the
attacks. It is really shocking that while the Aussie police swooped on the Indian students to
thwart their protests against racist violence, the same police have hardly displayed any urgency
or sensitivity to stop the spate of crimes and violence so far. This brings out the real attitude and
intent of Aussie authorities towards this phenomenon.

The Australian authorities deny racism - but their own pronouncements and assumptions are
racist! Take for example the advice of one Inspector Scott Mahony of the Melbourne police

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force, who asked Indians not to talk loudly in their native language in public or travel around
with expensive items such as mp3 players on display. Is it not racist to blame the victims for the
display of their native language and their electronic equipment?

Attacks on Indians, though not a new phenomenon in Australia, have been especially violent
during the last few weeks. There have been at least 60 to 70 incidents of a serious nature.
According to police records at least three cases of crime against Indian students are registered on
a daily basis. Partly, of course, Indian students are being targeted for shining academically and
because they are perceived as getting better jobs than local Australian unemployed youth. But
that is not the whole story.

Remember that not long ago, taxi drivers of Indian and Pakistani origin had protested in
Melbourne against police indifference to a series of attacks on them. That story had not been
highlighted much by the corporate Indian media because it made less interesting copy for elite
India than the attacks on people like us.

The truth is that racism is deeply entrenched in Australia's state policy: the worst of its racism is
directed at its Aboriginal population, from whom the country itself was stolen by colonial
Europeans. Today, a disproportionate percentage of Aborigines are jailed, or killed in
``encounters'' on the streets, and there is no Aboriginal representation in the Australian
parliament. Australian ministers have time and again got away with racist remarks against
immigrants - the boat people who come seeking refuge to Australia. Australian policy treats
such immigrant refugees as criminals - penning them into jail-like detention centres for months.
And of course, that is not to mention the rampant and rising racism against Muslims in Australia,
in the wake of the war on terror. The episode of Dr Hanif was only the tip of the iceberg - the
Australian government's racism today is reinforced by its role in the occupation of Iraq, and its
partnership with the US in sponsoring Islamophobia.

The attacks on Indian students are no aberration - they are part and parcel of the deep-seated
racism in Australian society and politics finding renewed expression in the wake of the
globalised recession.

Commentators have dubbed the recent developments as the present day Pauline Hanson
phenomenon"; Pauline Hanson was the conservative politician who got elected to the Australian
parliament in 1996, openly speaking of the "swamping" of Australia by people from Asia and the
consequent unemployment of "Aussie battlers".

Racism is a simmering phenomenon not just in Australia, but also in other countries like the US
and the UK which are championing globalisation. For them, globalisation means the free
mobility of capital to usurp the land and livelihood of people of developing countries; it has
never meant the free movement of labour to their countries. Predictably, in the wake of the

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current economic recession spawned by their disastrous policies, we are seeing a renewed
offensive of racism against migrant workers from the Third World in these countries - from
attacks on Sikh cab drivers and retrenchment of Asian teachers in the US, to Britain's Prime
Minister Gordon Brown's call for British jobs for British people, the drum of racism is clearly
being beaten by the ruling class to divert and mislead the anxiety of the working class in the face
of recession.

As we protest against the attacks on Indians in Australia, we must also, however, remind
ourselves of Indias own homespun variant of ``anti-migrant'' chauvinism - such as the violence
unleashed by the right-wing Shiv Sena against north Indian migrants in Mumbai.

It is high time that the people of the Third World and the working class all over the world speak
out against the present spate of racist assaults and the politics

of hate and chauvinism in which the promoters of recession-hit globalisation are seeking a
convenient refuge.

[This article first appeared in the CPI (ML) Liberation's ML Update, vol. 12 no. 23,
June 2-8, 2009.]

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 REFERENCES

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Jain, M.P., Indian Constitutional Law, Lexis Nexis, Nagpur, 5th ed., 2008

WEBLIOGRAPHY

http://www.freedomforum.org/packages/first/curricula/educationforfreedom/L04main.
htm
http://www.iep.utm.edu/l/law-phil.htm
http://www2.ohchr.org/english/law/ccpr.htm
http://www.article19.org/
http://www.watchtower.org/e/19960722/article_01.htm
http://www.article19.org/speaking-out
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/focus/story/0,,1702539,00.html
www.articlesnatch.com/topic/freedom+of+speech
www.un.org/en/documents/udhr

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