Our freedoms are under threat again. The editor of the Statesman was arrested for reproducing an article by Jonathan Hari, "Why Should I Respect These Oppressive Religions?" They were arrested under Section 295 of the Indian Penal Code which outlaws offenses against religion undertaken with "deliberate and malicious intent". This phrase has always been taken origin as a safeguard that legitimate criticism of religion will be allowed. But this arrest is a chilling sign of just how fragile our liberties are when it comes to speech involving religion.

There are two problems with this law. First, laws that are asked to judge intent are often inherently problematic. For instance the same difficulty lies in deciding whether someone is merely propagating their religion or propagating with an intent to convert. Second, there is an assumption that religion must be respected. Even as someone sympathetic to the claims of religion, I find this assumption strange for four reasons. As glorious as religious heritages might be, most organised religion comes with unsavory baggage. All kinds of oppression and violence have been licensed in their name. We can debate whether this constitutes the essence of a particular religion. But it is near impossible to debate historical religions without representing any in a way that does not offend some of its adherents. These representations should not be malicious or undertaken with impunity, but will be discomforting nonetheless.

Second, despite calls for respect, the blunt truth is that almost no religion can, from within its own theological premises, grant parity to other religions in some deep and meaningful sense. In this way, religious speech intrinsically creates hierarchies of one kind or the other.

... contd.