The framers of the United States Constitution so highly valued
free speech that they enshrined it in the document’s very first
amendment. India, the world’s other mammoth democracy, has a
first amendment too, but its intent and meaning are quite the
opposite. Lawrence Liang, a legal expert and co-founder of the
Alternative Law Forum, a legal collective based in India focused
on social justice, has written a sharp legal analysis of the
ways in which the fundamental right to free speech in India is
limited. He remarks on the irony of the phrase “the First
Amendment:” in the United States, he notes, the First Amendment
refers to the right to free speech, a right that has been held
almost absolute, while in India, the First Amendment refers to
the attempt to “strengthen state regulation over free speech.”
That distinction is worth remembering when considering the
dustup over Communications Minister Kapil Sibal’s call for “pre-
screening” of the Internet, in response to what he sees as a
problem of offensive and ab