Censorship (short note)

Censorship

Censorship is the restriction by an authority of speech, books, films or other expression thought to be harmful; the authority may be the state or an organised social, religious or cultural body. Banning a whole work and cutting a part of it (as film censorship does) are both forms of it.

Against. J. S. Mill held that even ideas that look false should not be silenced, for reasons of two kinds. Some concern the limits of our knowledge: we can never be certain that what we now hold true really is true, and an idea that seems false may still carry a part of the truth that a ban would throw away. Others concern how truth stays alive: a truth never exposed to challenge decays into a slogan repeated without thought, and truth is in any case reached only through the clash of rival views. There is also a practical danger. A ban satisfies the protesters quickly, but every ban makes the next one easier, and a society that starts banning slides into the habit, to the lasting cost of its freedom.

For. Freedom may be limited to prevent serious harm to others. Someone who runs an online campaign urging neighbours to drive a family of another faith out of their housing colony is not merely expressing a view; the campaign threatens the family's own freedom, and constraint is justified.

Limits. In Indian constitutional discussion the justified constraints are called reasonable restrictions. A restriction qualifies only if it is in proportion to the act it targets, goes no further than it must, and rests on reasons that can be openly defended; a curb heavier than that would eat into freedom in general. They must also rest on proper procedures and important moral arguments, and the burden of justifying them lies on whoever would restrict, since for Mill there is always a presumption in favour of liberty.