Nevin A, Tamil Nadu National Law University
ABSTRACT
Freedom of speech has always remained a delicate issue with regard to India and with the advent and rise of social media and cyberspace, it has only become more and more disputed. This freedom or right does have restrictions especially when speech borders on hate leading to the censoring and criminalization of what is called ‘hate speech’. Now, hate speech has a not- so-clear position in a lot of legislations around the world and the Indian legal framework is no different.
Regulating hate speech has proved to be extremely challenging for India. Regulation has often been threatened by the prospect of it becoming restriction. Despite the laws that are in place, hate speech has been increasing in India in recent times. The reason why it’s ‘despite the laws in place’ is that there is a case of excessive criminalization of hate speech and other such offences in India. However, the implementation of such criminalization has been all over the place.
This paper will thus examine the evolution, existence and implementation of laws relating to online hate speech in India. The various challenges that concern the same will be dealt with. The aim will be to come up with solutions to make the framework a near-perfect one. Brief research on and references to foreign legislations will also be made in that regard. By the end of this paper, a thorough analysis of the position of online hate speech in India will have been done along with a potential future framework to correct the issues with the existing one.
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