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CPR Land Rights Initiative invites you to a talk on:
The Evolution of Free Speech in Colonial and Post-Colonial India
Thursday, 8th August 2024, 3:30 – 5:00 PM IST
Speaker:
Dr. Gautam Bhatia, Advocate, New Delhi
Moderator:
Dr. Namita Wahi, Senior Fellow, CPR & Director, Land Rights Initiative
This is the third in a series of talks on “Legal History” as part of the Land Rights Initiative Speaker Series. This series is part of the Land Rights Initiative’s 10 year anniversary celebrations.
This event will be held in a hybrid mode at the CPR Conference Room and online over Zoom. Please register below to attend either in person or via Zoom. Refreshments will be served.
About the talk:
This talk will focus on the evolution of free speech law and doctrine in the colonial era, in the Constituent Assembly Debates, and in the years following the enactment of the Constitution. It will explore how laws such as sedition, the press acts, and others, were deployed by the British in order to censor and suppress the rising nationalist movement, and imprison nationalist leaders – as well as the response of those leaders. It will then consider the debates in the Constituent Assembly, and the tension between a “libertarian” school of thought and a “law and order” school of thought – a tension that is reflected in the final text of Article 19 of the Constitution. Finally, it will explore how this tension has played out in judicial doctrine after Independence, and in the approach of courts towards the question of free speech, and its relationship with public order, public morality, and social cohesion, up to the present day.
About the speaker:
Dr. Gautam Bhatia is a constitutional lawyer and legal scholar. He is the author of Offend, Shock and Disturb: Free Speech Under the Constitution (OUP: 2016), The Transformative Constitution: A Radical Biography (Harper Collins 2019), Horizontal Rights: An Institutional Approach (Hart 2023), Unsealed Covers: A Decade of the Constitution, the Courts, and the State (HarperCollins 2023), along with other books and articles. Gautam has contributed chapters on “Directive Principles” to The Oxford Handbook of the Indian Constitution and “Religious Speech” to The Oxford Handbook of Freedom of Speech. He is the founder and editor of Constitutional Law and Philosophy, a blog that has been covering Indian constitutionalism and the courts for the last eleven years. Some of the recent cases he has been involved in include the Electoral Bonds challenge and the Article 370 case. Gautam’s books and academic scholarship have been frequently cited before the Supreme Court and several High Courts. He has also appeared as an amicus curiae in constitutional cases before the Supreme Court of Kenya. Gautam is a frequent legal commentator in opinion pieces for the Hindu and the Hindustan Times. Gautam is also a science fiction writer, and has written two critically acclaimed books, The Wall (Harper Collins: 2020) and The Horizon (Harper Collins: 2021).
Gautam holds B.A. LL.B. (Hons.) degrees from National Law School of India University, Bengaluru, (2011), and B.C.L. (2012) and M. Phil. (2013) degrees from Balliol College, University of Oxford where he was a Rhodes Scholar. Gautam also has an LL.M. degree from Yale University (2014) specializing in constitutional law, and completed his D.Phil. at Oxford University in 2021.
