Slandering the sacred: blasphemy law and religious affect in colonial India
"Although blasphemy is as old as religion itself, its history has begun a new chapter in recent years. Slanders of the sacred are everywhere, as in the highly visible Charlie Hebdo case, with "religion" sometimes appearing as little more than a membrane for giving and receiving offens...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Print Book |
| Language: | English |
| Subito Delivery Service: | Order now. |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Chicago
The University of Chicago Press
2023
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| In: | Year: 2023 |
| Series/Journal: | Class 200: new studies in religion
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| Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains: | B
Britisch-Indien
/ Blasphemy
B India, Strafgesetzbuch (1860) |
| Further subjects: | B
Libel and slander (Great Britain)
Religious aspects
History 19th century
B Blasphemy Law and legislation (India) History 19th century B Libel and slander (India) Religious aspects History 19th century B Blasphemy Law and legislation (Great Britain) History 19th century B freedom of expression (India) History 19th century B India Indian Penal Code |
| Online Access: |
Table of Contents |
| Summary: | "Although blasphemy is as old as religion itself, its history has begun a new chapter in recent years. Slanders of the sacred are everywhere, as in the highly visible Charlie Hebdo case, with "religion" sometimes appearing as little more than a membrane for giving and receiving offense. Where some explain the contemporary preoccupation with blasphemy by pointing to the interconnectedness of twenty-first-century media, J. Barton Scott argues that we need to look deeper into the past at the colonial-era infrastructures that continue to shape our globalized world. Slandering the Sacred examines one such powerful and widely influential legal infrastructure: Section 295A of the Indian Penal Code. What would it look like to take Section 295A as a text in, of, and for religion-a connective tissue interlinking multiple religious worlds? To answer this question, Scott explores the cultural, intellectual, and legal pre-history of this law, moving between colonial India and imperial Britain as well as between secular law and modern religion. Section 295A reveals a set of problems with no easy solution. It places a chill on free speech, extends the power of the state over civil society, and exacerbates the culture of religious controversy that it was designed to fix. The legislators who enacted the law foresaw the damage it could do and they enacted it anyway, as a half-despairing measure to curb injurious speech. Their problems are still our problems. The twenty-first century has compounded modernity's free-speech headache. Section 295A opens a useful window onto these problems precisely because it is a problem, too. Its history is a tale about the afterlives of the holy dead, the legal definition of the anglophone category "religion," and the transmissibility of outrage as bureaucratized affect"-- |
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| Item Description: | Includes bibliographical references and index |
| ISBN: | 0226824888 |