The Unseen Hand of an Underappreciated Law: The Doniger Affair and Its Aftermath

The international outcry by scholars and journalists that followed Penguin Books,’ withdrawal of Wendy Doniger’s 2009, The Hindus: An Alternative History, typically attributed the conflict to one of two causes. Reactions in India tended to blame the publisher for capitulating to pressure from the Hindu right; reactions in the United States tended to blame a climate of intolerance for free speech in India as a whole. This article argues that both responses overlooked the true source of the conflict, section 295A of the Indian Penal Code, which criminalizes “outraging the religious feelings of any class of Indian citizens.” This law has generated a politics of religious sentiment that legally empowers those offended by academic speech to suppress it. The statute, moreover, works to conceal its operations through the manufacture of hurt feelings and consequent demands for censorship that appear to emerge from offended subjects rather than from the law.