Abstract
The prosecution arising from the publication of the pamphlet titled 'Rangila Rasool' in Lahore in the 1920s occupies a foundational place in the history of Indian criminal law. The acquittal of its publisher, Mahasaya Rajpal, under Section 153A of the Indian Penal Code, the provision did not criminalise insults to deceased religious founders. The ensuing rioting, associated litigation, political mobilisation, communal violence, and legislative debate culminated in the enactment of Section 295A of the Indian Penal Code in 1927.
This article situates that enactment within a longer history of religious contestation in India, colonial governance, competing proselytising movements, communal electorates, the Khilafat agitation, print polemics, and extrajudicial demands for religious punishment. It analyses Raj Paul v Emperor, the proceedings concerning the publications 'Vichitra Jivan' and 'Risala-i-Vartaman', the debates surrounding the insertion of the words “deliberate and malicious,” and the judicial stance on Section 295A in Ramji Lal Modi v State of Uttar Pradesh. It then examines the later doctrines of proximity, incitement, social reform, and contextual interpretation developed in Superintendent, Central Prison v Ram Manohar Lohia, Sujato Bhadra v State of West Bengal, and Shreya Singhal v Union of India.
The offence must be understood as an emergency colonial response to organised communal pressure rather than as a general prohibition upon religious criticism. It should be narrowly construed to cover only expression animated by demonstrable malice and possessing a proximate relationship with serious public disorder. Historical inquiry, theological disagreement, social reform, artistic expression, and good-faith criticism must remain outside its scope.
I. Introduction
The controversy surrounding Rangila Rasul, commonly rendered in contemporary English as Rangeela Rasool, was not merely a dispute over an offensive pamphlet. It became a critical point at which religious polemic, colonial political strategy, communal mobilisation, and criminal law converged.[1]
The Punjab authorities prosecuted the publisher Mahashay Rajpal under Section 153A of the Indian Penal Code. The Lahore High Court, however, held that an offensive attack upon a deceased religious founder did not necessarily constitute an attack upon the contemporary community of his followers. In Raj Paul v Emperor, Justice Dalip Singh therefore set aside the conviction.[2]
The decision generated widespread rioting. Colonial officials became concerned that similar controversies would produce continuing violence. The result was the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1927, which inserted Section 295A into the Penal Code.
The provision did not criminalise every insult to religion. Its framers deliberately restricted it to insults committed with a “deliberate and malicious intention” to outrage the religious feelings of a community. The Select Committee recognised that religious doctrines and practices might be criticised in good faith for historical inquiry, the discovery of truth, or social reform. The expression “malicious” was added precisely to prevent the provision from acquiring an unlimited reach.[3]
Nevertheless, Section 295A subsequently became known as the Indian form of a blasphemy law. After the Constitution came into force, its validity was upheld in Ramji Lal Modi v State of Uttar Pradesh.[4]
The provision survived the replacement of the Indian Penal Code. With effect from 1 July 2024, substantially the same offence is contained in Section 299 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023. It remains punishable with imprisonment extending to three years, a fine, or both. Under the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, it is cognisable and non-bailable, although a court may not take cognisance without prior sanction of the Central or State Government.[5]
This continuity makes the historical inquiry more than an antiquarian exercise. The origin of the offence illuminates the boundaries that should govern its present application.
II. The Longer Historical Frame: Rule, Religious Difference, and “Middle Eastern Coloniality”
The Rangila Rasul controversy cannot be understood solely as an episode of British colonialism. It locates the dispute within what it calls “Middle Eastern coloniality”: the creation of political institutions dominated by military and administrative elites originating outside India, accompanied by a persistent distinction between ruling groups and indigenous subjects.
The early Delhi Sultanate was dominated by a narrow body of Turkish nobles; that subsequent dynasties continued to rely upon Afghan, Iranian, Turanian, and other foreign-born elites; and that indigenous participation remained limited. The Khaljis are described as drawing upon migrants from Khalaj, while a small number of Afghan families are said to have controlled major offices under the Sayyids. Babur’s political system drew upon Iranian and Turanian groupings, and Mughal administration continued to recognise distinctions between foreign-born and Indian elements.
Akbar’s administration is represented as maintaining a substantial numerical preference for foreign-born Muslims, with Hindus and Indian Muslims occupying a smaller share of high office. This pattern continued through later Mughal reigns. Mughal political and architectural power is also said to have placed mosques and Islamic monuments prominently within public spaces.
Medieval period accounts that describe Hindu–Muslim interaction principally through the language of a seamless “Ganga–Jamuni” synthesis is a disputed one. Coexistence occurred within unequal political relationships and contested memories. The removal of the pilgrimage tax under Shah Jahan following representations by the Sanskrit scholar Kavīndrācārya is an example of negotiation rather than the natural disappearance of religious hierarchy.
Hinduism and Islam represented distinctive cosmologies, theological commitments, and social practices. Their adherents lived alongside one another, traded, debated, borrowed forms, and sometimes shared sacred sites, but they also contested religious authority, political power, image worship, conversion, sacred geography, and the public visibility of religious symbols.
The historiographical question is not whether the medieval period was exclusively syncretic or exclusively antagonistic, but how accommodation and contestation existed simultaneously.
III. Religious Conflict and the Formation of Self-Conscious Communities
Recent scholarship has questioned the proposition that Hindu–Muslim conflict was purely a product of British “divide and rule.” Ajay Verghese and Roberto Stefan Foa, for example, have investigated evidence of precolonial Hindu–Muslim violence, while also recognising that colonial institutions altered, classified, and frequently intensified communal identities.[6]
The fourteenth-century traveller Ibn Battuta described recurring conflict between Muslims and local Hindus in the region of Mangalore. The Hindu rulers nevertheless attempted to preserve peace because Muslim merchants were economically important. The example illustrates a recurring historical pattern: material interdependence did not necessarily produce theological agreement or social harmony.
David Lorenzen has argued that interaction and competition between Hindus and Muslims between approximately 1200 AD and 1500 AD contributed to the formation of a more self-conscious Hindu identity. His intervention challenges the claim that “Hinduism” was invented entirely by nineteenth-century colonial scholarship. It suggests that forms of Hindu collective identification had already become visible in medieval textual and political contexts.[7]
Vidyāpati’s early fifteenth-century Kīrtilatā offers a literary depiction of Hindus and Turks living in proximity in Jaunpur while ridiculing one another’s religious practices. The text describes namaz and pūjā occurring side by side, but also records allegations of Turks coercing Hindus into forced labour, humiliation of passing by Brahmins by putting cow vagina on their head, destruction of sacred markers like tilak and janeu, and destruction of temples to build mosques upon them.
Sant Eknath’s sixteenth-century Hindu–Turk Saṃvāda similarly stages a religious argument. The Muslim interlocutor mocks Hindu narratives concerning Brahmā getting attracted to his ‘daughter’ Sarasvatī, Rāma needing the help of monkeys to rescue his wife Sītā, Kṛṣṇa being imprisoned despite being a God, the Vedas, Oṃ, and image worship as evil tricks. Sant Eknath responds by defending divine omnipresence, asking why God should be confined to Mecca, questioning cow slaughter, and challenging the demand that Hindus convert as the Turks believe that Hindu birth itself is a sin.
These texts demonstrate that polemical criticism of religious founders, scriptures, practices, images, and conversion was not created by the twentieth-century printing press. Print intensified and widened such disputes, but it did not originate them.
IV. The Lāṭ Bhairava Conflict of 1809
One of the most important colonial precedents was the conflict surrounding the Lāṭ Bhairava shrine in Banaras in 1809. It occurred before the enactment of the Indian Penal Code and before the colonial government possessed a comprehensive statutory framework for offences involving religion.
The shrine was situated in a religiously sensitive area associated with both the Viśvanātha temple complex and an Idgah. The word lāṭ referred to a pillar, later reduced to a stump, associated with Kāla Bhairava. In local sacred geography, it represented Bhairava’s staff and his authority to punish wrongdoing.
An annual ritual ceremonially united the Lāṭ with a nearby well. The site was also embedded in the occupational and religious life of lower-class weaving communities. Hindu and newly converted Muslim weavers interacted economically. Some Muslim weavers participated in devotional traditions associated with Ghazi Miyan or Salar Masud, a figure represented in hagiography as a devout proselytizer was killed in conflict with the Hindu ruler Suheldev.
The Lāṭ appears to have functioned for a period as a shared or overlapping sacred space. The arrangement reflected a customary status quo rather than a legally demarcated settlement. The qazi exercised legal authority within the inherited judicial structure, local police maintained order, and British officials concentrated heavily upon revenue and administrative control.
Just before the Lāṭ Bhairava marriage festival, Muslims reportedly protested after Friday prayers. A small image of Hanumān had also been placed upon a platform between the principal sacred structures. A Hindu businessman who had recovered from illness wished to construct a modest shrine there. Because the land was apparently unclaimed, he considered the proposal legitimate. The plan nevertheless intensified the dispute, and the Hanumān image was reportedly overturned during the night’s events.
Large numbers of Hindus gathered the following morning. The Muslim kotwal was accused in the Hindu memorial of colluding with members of his own community. He invited Hindu representatives, including Ratan Singh and three associates, to present their grievances but allegedly had them detained and beaten without proper inquiry.
The arrests produced retaliation, particularly among Rajputs, religious mendicants, and armed or mercantile groups. Hindus outnumbered the Muslim weaving population in the immediate conflict. The district magistrate eventually restored control, and by the third day a substantial military force occupied the city.
The case exposed difficulties inherent in the continued application of Muslim criminal law. Punishment ordinarily depended upon opinions issued by Muslim law officers. Acting Magistrate Mr Bird objected that the applicable law did not treat injuries to Hindu and Muslim sacred objects symmetrically. In his assessment, it assigned exceptional sanctity to Islam while treating attacks upon Hindu images as acts against idolatry.
The government ultimately dispensed with reliance upon the fatwa and constituted a special court. It preserved the prior spatial arrangement and allowed each community to repair and purify the violated objects according to its traditions. Hindu reconsecration of the shrine was not completed until June 1810.
The Hindu and Muslim memorials submitted after the violence. The Hindu memorial alleged that the area surrounding the pillar was polluted, the Lāṭ was struck with shoes, and other sacrilegious acts were committed at night.
According to the Hindu account, images had long been worshipped near a peepal tree beside the pillar and were temporarily covered or removed when Muslims gathered for Friday or Eid prayers.
According to the Muslim account, Hindu images had been placed impermissibly within or near the premises used for Muslim prayer.
Sunthar Visuvalingam and Elizabeth Chalier-Visuvalingam’s reconstruction of the Lāṭ Bhairava conflict, based upon Hindu, Muslim, and colonial memorials, demonstrates the value of such records.[8]
The recurrence of the same pattern of tension at the site in 2016 reinforces the importance of sacred geography. Legal settlement may suspend a conflict without resolving the underlying incompatibility of claims to ritual access, historical ownership, and public symbolism.
V. Nineteenth-Century Conflicts over Religious Images and Sacred Space
There were several Parsi–Muslim conflicts in Bombay. In October 1851, violence followed controversy over a blurred depiction of the Prophet Muhammad in the Parsi publication Chitra Gyan Darpan. A further disturbance occurred in 1857 after Bejanji Sheriaji Bharucha was accused of disrespecting a mosque. In February 1874, another conflict arose over an article on the Prophet in a work titled ‘Famous Prophets and Communities’.
These incidents established a pattern. Material intended for one linguistic or religious readership could be extracted, translated, circulated, and transformed into the basis of mobilisation among communities.
The lecture also refers to conflict in Salem involving the objection of Hindus to a construction of a mosque along a route used for Hindu religious processions. The resulting violence continued for several days, the colonial government initially struggled to restore order, and killings took place. Arrests, rapid convictions, and severe imprisonment alongwith pulling down of the partially built mosque eventually re-established a fragile equilibrium.
Disputes over processional routes and the right to play music near mosques became a recurrent feature of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century communal politics.
VI. Arya Samaj Polemics, Conversion, and Assassination
Pandit Lekh Ram represents an important precursor to the Rangila Rasool controversy. A prominent Arya Samaj writer and publicist, he participated in debates with Muslim and Christian polemicists and in campaigns aimed at returning converts to Hindu society.
His most famous exchanges were with Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, founder of the Ahmadiyya movement. Ahmad’s Surma-i-Chashm-i-Arya (an “antimony” that would open Arya eyes) was answered by Lekh Ram in Nuskha-i-Khabt-i-Ahmadiyya (a prescription for Ahmadi “madness”).
In 1892, Lekh Ram published Risala-i-Jihad, portraying Islam as warlike. In 1893, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad predicted that Lekh Ram would die violently within six years, close to Eid. On 6 March 1897, the day after Eid, Lekh Ram was stabbed in Lahore by a man who had lived with him under the pretence of wishing to convert to Hinduism. The killer escaped. Although suspicion fell upon Ahmad and his followers, legal responsibility was never established.
The assassination was followed by other attacks upon figures connected with Hindu reform and reconversion. Swami Shraddhanand was shot by Abdul Rashid, who pretended to want to reconvert to Hinduism, on 23 December 1926 while recovering from illness. Lala Nanak Chand, a prominent Arya Samajist in Delhi, was also murdered.
These incidents formed part of an environment in which theological criticism, conversion, reconversion, and religious honour were increasingly connected with physical danger. The Rangila Rasool controversy did not enter an ideologically neutral public sphere.
VII. Colonial Constitutional Engineering and Separate Electorates
In July 1906, Secretary of State John Morley indicated that reforms to the Indian legislative councils were under consideration. Soon afterward, Mohsin-ul-Mulk, associated with the Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College, explored the possibility of a Muslim deputation to Viceroy Minto.
The Shimla Deputation argued that Muslim representation should not be determined solely by numerical population. Muslims, it maintained, possessed special political importance because of their former status as a ruling community and their contribution to the defence of the British Empire.
Sir Syed Ahmad Khan had already opposed Muslim participation in the Congress and argued that Hindu and Muslim political interests could diverge sharply. His public loyalty to British power and distrust of majoritarian representative institutions became an important intellectual antecedent of separate Muslim political organisation.
The All-India Muslim League was established shortly after the Shimla Deputation. The Morley–Minto reforms of 1909 then institutionalised separate Muslim electorates. Religious community was no longer merely a social identity; it became a formally recognised unit of political representation.
This transformation is central to the story of Section 295A. Once communities acquired separate political representation, demonstrations of injury could be converted into negotiations over offices, legislative seats, educational institutions, and governmental concessions.
VIII. The Khilafat Movement and the Politicisation of Religious Authority
The Khilafat movement emerged after the First World War in defence of the Ottoman Caliphate. Led in India by Mohammad Ali and Shaukat Ali.
B. R. Ambedkar referred to attempts by sections of the Khilafat leadership to encourage Afghan intervention in India and argued that the movement strengthened political loyalties extending beyond territorial nationalism.[9]
Gandhi’s writings reveal a contrasting moral strategy. He repeatedly insisted that Hindus and Muslims were brothers and that their antagonism represented a temporary derangement rather than a permanent civilisational division. “Allāhu Akbar,” Gandhi explained, affirmed the greatness of God; Hindus should therefore be able to utter it without compromising their own invocation of Rāma.
On cow slaughter, Gandhi argued that Hindus could not compel Muslims by violence, while Muslims should recognise that killing cows specifically to provoke Hindus was contrary to neighbourly duty and, in his interpretation, to the spirit of Islam.[10]
Critics including Annie Besant warned that attaching the national movement to a religious campaign would enlarge the political authority of orthodox clerics. The Khilafat agitation brought the ulema into mass politics, and after the movement collapsed, many continued to function as defenders of communal interests.
Gene Thursby’s study of Hindu–Muslim conflict in northern India between 1923 and 1928 supports the proposition that religious publications, local leadership, conversion campaigns, and political bargaining became deeply interconnected during this period.[11]
IX. The Print Controversies: Vichitra Jivan, Rangila Rasul, and Sair-i-Dozakh
Three publications became central to the legal developments of the 1920s:
1. Vichitra Jivan, written by Kali Charan Sharma;
2. Rangila Rasool, written by Chamupati Lal and published by Mahasaya Rajpal; and
3. “Sair-i-Dozakh,” attributed to Devi Sharan Sharma and published in Risala-i-Vartaman.
All were associated with Arya Samaj circles.
Muslim writers had circulated texts using abusive language against Kṛṣṇa, Hindu deities, Swami Dayananda Saraswati, and Sītā. One publication called for the burning of the Bhagavad Gītā; another called Swami Dayananda Saraswati ‘characterless’; and another allegedly contained obscene representations of Hindu deities and described Sītā in sexually derogatory terms.
Within this polemical environment, Chamupati Lal composed a satirical biography of the Prophet Muhammad’s domestic life. Rajpal published it anonymously in May 1924. The first edition of approximately one thousand copies was reportedly sold quickly. This work was aimed initially at a limited Urdu-reading audience but soon acquired national notoriety.
X. Gandhi’s Criticism and the Expansion of the Controversy
A little while later, Gandhi received a copy of Rangila Rasool and criticised it in Young India.
He reasoned that ridicule of the Prophet would not persuade a Muslim to abandon Islam and would not assist a Hindu experiencing doubts about Hindu belief. He emphasized that this could lead to riots.
Rajpal later argued that the agitation against the publication was not spontaneous. According to his defence, the pamphlet had circulated within a limited readership until Gandhi’s intervention assigned it a wider public importance and raised questions about the author’s intention.
This issue would recur in subsequent cases: should the criminality of a publication depend upon the text itself, or upon the engineered and interpretative publicity, translation, posters, speeches, and political organisation that later cause it to become inflammatory?
The distinction remains relevant in the digital age. A text may exist unnoticed for years and become the basis of disorder only when selected passages are extracted and strategically amplified by third parties.
XI. The Prosecution under Section 153A
Rajpal was prosecuted under Section 153A of the Penal Code. Before Magistrate C. H. Disney, he argued that the pamphlet was directed towards social reform. Its discussion of polygamy, concubinage, temporary marriage, and disparities of age in marriage was intended, he said, to discourage harmful practices.
He maintained that religious criticism was indispensable in a society characterised by proselytising movements. If one religious community seeks converts from another, examination of doctrines and sacred biographies could not be prohibited altogether.
Rajpal also invoked European biographical works on the Prophet and contended that the pamphlet rested upon factual sources. He denied any intention of promoting hatred or enmity between classes.
XII. Kohat and the Wider Cycle of Communal Violence
The trial unfolded amid a succession of communal disturbances. One of the most serious riots occurred in Kohat in September 1924.
A Muslim newspaper Lahaul had published an inflammatory poem threatening to burn the Gītā, break Kṛṣṇa’s flute, and use violence against Hindus. Jeevan Das, secretary of the local Sanatan Dharma Sabha, retaliated by publishing a poem telling Muslim clerics to take their prayer mats to Arabia and the replacement the Kaaba with a Viṣṇu temple.
The publication was also connected with Hindu accounts of Muslim men abducting Hindu women and converting them through force or intimidation. Gandhi rejected these claims, maintaining that conversion could not simply be accomplished by physically carrying a person away.
Muslim clerics then delivered speeches demanding that Jeevan Das be punished. Maulvi Ahmad Gul and Qazi Miraj Din led a crowd to Assistant Commissioner S. Ahmad Khan and declared that if the government did not act, punishment would be imposed under Sharia.
The colonial administration promised prosecution under Sections 505 and 153A. Jeevan Das was granted bail but ordered to leave the district for his safety.
Religious meetings continued. At the Haji Bahadur Mosque, participants reportedly swore that they would divorce their wives if they failed to defend Islam. A crowd of approximately 1,500 approached Deputy Commissioner Riley. Arson, looting, killing, and the displacement of Hindu and Sikh residents followed. The violence required extensive police intervention.
Ambedkar catalogued communal disturbances in Lahore, Lucknow, Moradabad, Bhagalpur, Nagpur, Shahjahanpur, Allahabad, Calcutta, Bombay, and other regions during the middle and late 1920s. Although their immediate causes varied, many involved processions, music near mosques, publications, religious festivals, conversion, or claims over public space.[12]
XIII. Raj Paul v Emperor: The Lahore High Court Judgment
The decisive judgment was delivered by Justice Dalip Singh on 4 May 1927 in Raj Paul v Emperor, reported as 1927 SCC OnLine Lah 304: AIR 1927 Lah 590.[13]
The judge dwelled upon the legal question: did the pamphlet promote or attempt to promote enmity or hatred between existing classes of His Majesty’s subjects?
Justice Dalip Singh held that an attack upon a deceased religious teacher did not automatically amount to an attack upon the contemporary community. Section 153A was directed towards hostility between classes as they existed in the present.
He also recognised the implications for historical writing. If the anger of believers became the test of criminality, a serious historian who examined the life of a religious founder and reached an adverse conclusion could be prosecuted for promoting communal hatred.
The judgment therefore distinguished among three matters:
• criticism of a deceased religious figure;
• an attack upon a contemporary religious community; and
• historical or academic examination conducted in good faith.
A publication might be offensive and morally objectionable without satisfying the statutory ingredients of Section 153A. The probable reaction of an audience could not substitute for proof of the offence.
Justice Dalip Singh suggested that the legislature might enact a separate provision covering publications deliberately intended to wound religious feelings. Courts, however, could not remedy the omission by stretching Section 153A beyond its language.
Rajpal was accordingly acquitted.
XIV. Reaction to the Acquittal and the Intervention of Governor Hailey
Muslim newspapers and organisations demanded reversal of the judgment, disciplinary action against the judge, or new legislation.
Al-Jamiat, associated with the Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind, invoked the position that intentional insult to the Prophet was punishable by death under Sharia. Maulana Mohammad Ali warned at Delhi’s Jama Masjid that Muslims might take the law into their own hands if the judgment was allowed to stand.
The Muslim Outlook questioned Justice Dalip Singh’s competence and suggested that his religious background had affected the decision. It called for an inquiry and his resignation.
Punjab Governor Malcolm Hailey publicly expressed sympathy with Muslims who felt that the law left them without an adequate remedy. At the same time, he recognised that freedom of historical and religious inquiry had to be protected.
Hailey’s formulation attempted to balance public tranquillity against the search for truth. Serious criticism and even limited satire could remain legitimate, he suggested, but calculated ridicule posed a different problem. Much depended upon the manner of treatment and the writer’s intention.
The executive thus adopted an ambivalent position. It did not remove Justice Dalip Singh. Officials sought further test cases that might permit a different judicial interpretation of Section 153A before resorting to legislative amendment.
XV. Vichitra Jivan and the Allahabad Proceedings
The prosecution of Kali Charan Sharma for Vichitra Jivan provided the first important ‘test-case’ for the colonial govt. against the Lahore judgment.
The Government of the United Provinces swung into suo motu action and forfeited copies of the work under the Code of Criminal Procedure on the ground that it promoted enmity under Section 153A. A Full Bench of the Allahabad High Court upheld the forfeiture in Kali Charan Sharma v King-Emperor, AIR 1927 All 649.
A subsequent revision arising from Sharma’s conviction was decided by Dalal J. in Kali Charan Sharma v King-Emperor, AIR 1927 All 654. Sharma had been sentenced to one year’s rigorous imprisonment and a fine of ₹1,000.[14]
Dalal J. expressly disagreed with Justice Dalip Singh’s distinction. Rather than deciding the matter from the perspective of a detached judge, he placed himself in the position of an ordinary Muslim believer. He reasoned that hatred of the author could extend to hatred of the class to which the author belonged.
The Allahabad approach therefore treated the emotional movement from insult to communal hostility as sufficiently foreseeable to attract Section 153A. The Lahore approach insisted upon a more exact distinction between offence to belief and enmity towards a community.
XVI. “Sair-i-Dozakh,” the Qadiani Posters, and the Vartaman Prosecution
A second test case for the colonial govt. arose from “Sair-i-Dozakh” in Risala-i-Vartaman. Soon after its publication, Mirza Bashiruddin Mahmud Ahmad, the Ahmadiyya Khalifa, called upon Muslims who loved the Prophet to make their injured feelings known to the authorities.
His appeal was reproduced as a provocative poster and distributed widely. It drew interpretative attention to selected portions of the article and led to protest meetings and visible unrest in Amritsar.
Arya Samaj organisations demanded removal of the poster, contending that it was itself inflammatory. The police prohibited it, but deliberately only after it had mobilised Muslim opinion. Proceedings under Section 153A began against editor and publisher Gyan Chand Pathak and alleged author Devi Sharan Sharma.
Balraj Puri, appearing for the defence, argued that the posters rather than the original article had caused the agitation. He distinguished shock, indignation, and contempt from hatred. A reader might find a text deeply offensive without developing enmity towards an entire community.
Puri also referred to earlier attacks upon Dayananda Saraswati whose authors had not been prosecuted. He warned that the legal system was effectively listening to whichever community shouted more loudly.
Prominent Hindu witnesses summoned for the defence did not appear. Their absence was interpreted in contradictory ways: Muslims viewed it as Hindu disapproval of offensive pamphleteering, while some Hindus regarded it as evidence of weakness and unwillingness to defend freedom of publication.
The accused were convicted in August 1927. These proceedings, together with the Vichitra Jivan cases, gave the colonial government sufficient evidence that judicial interpretation alone would not produce a stable solution.
XVII. Contempt of Court and the Conversion of Religious Agitation into Political Bargaining
The government prosecuted D. S. Bukhari of the Muslim Outlook for contempt because of attacks upon Justice Dalip Singh.
At the same time, Muslim political leaders connected the controversy with demands for representation in the Punjab legislature, universities, and public services. Maulana Zafar Ali Khan urged Muslims to maintain pressure for political concessions.
The episode demonstrates how an apparently theological dispute could generate material and constitutional demands. Religious injury became a resource within negotiations over political representation.
XVIII. The Assassination of Mahasaya Rajpal
Rajpal survived two earlier attempts upon his life. On 6 April 1929, a young carpenter named Ilm-ud-Din entered his premises in Lahore and stabbed him repeatedly.
Muhammad Ali Jinnah appeared in the appellate proceedings on Ilm-ud-Din’s behalf. The formal reported decision is Ilam Din v Emperor, AIR 1930 Lah 157. The conviction and capital sentence were sustained.[15]
Ilm-ud-Din’s funeral became a major public event. The Imam of the Wazir Khan Mosque led the prayers, Maulana Zafar Ali Khan participated, and Muhammad Iqbal is reported to have helped lower the body into the grave. Ilm-ud-Din was celebrated as a ghazi and shahid who had avenged an insult to the Prophet.
A mausoleum in Lahore’s Miani Sahib graveyard continues to commemorate him. The public veneration of the assassin became an important model for later blasphemy-related violence in Pakistan and the subcontinent.
After Partition, Rajpal’s family moved to Delhi, where Rajpal & Sons continued its publishing activities. He was later posthumously honoured for his defence of the freedom to publish.
XIX. Ilm-ud-Din’s Confession and the Personal Origins of Sacralised Violence
The heroic public narrative surrounding Ilm-ud-Din is complicated by a police confession preserved in the Punjab archives.
According to this account, he had known of the Rangila Rasool controversy and had seen Rajpal but was not initially moved to violence. He travelled for work in Multan and Kohat and returned to Lahore in late 1928.
The immediate crisis concerned his emotional attachment and infatuation with an adolescent boy called Haji. After Haji rejected him amid allegations concerning another carpenter, Ilm-ud-Din became suicidal. He considered killing Haji and himself.
A friend warned that the public would regard such an act as the destruction of his life for an unworthy personal cause. Ilm-ud-Din then decided that if he was to die, he should kill Rajpal, present the act as a defence of the Prophet, and attain martyrdom.
He washed, visited a barber, drank sattu, sought forgiveness from acquaintances, and proceeded to Rajpal’s office.
If accepted, the confession suggests that the murder cannot be understood solely as the direct consequence of reading Rangila Rasul. Personal rejection, suicidal despair, the search for public meaning, and an available cultural script of religious martyrdom intersected.
The later communal narrative transformed a private crisis into an exemplary act of religious heroism.
XX. The Legislative Response of 1927
The Government of India was pushed to amend the Penal Code as a hasty hard stop to these issues which they were not able to handle.
The proposed provision made the insult to religion or religious belief a substantive offence. The prosecution would no longer have to establish the promotion of enmity between contemporary communities under Section 153A.
The members of the Legislative Assembly objected that the bill was dangerously broad. Lala Lajpat Rai, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Hari Singh Gour, D.V.Belvi, M. R. Jayakar, Abdul Haye, T.A.K. Sherwani, and others emphasised the need to protect history, scholarship, religious reform, and honest criticism.
A. Lajpat Rai and Jinnah: Protecting Inquiry
Lajpat Rai regarded the bill as retrograde but accepted that some immediate response might be necessary in the prevailing emergency. He insisted that social reform was inseparable from religious criticism. A law protecting religion could not prohibit the reinterpretation of scriptures or criticism of practices.
Jinnah similarly maintained that historians, seekers of truth, and bona fide critics must be protected. The legislature had to distinguish genuine investigation from malicious vilification.
B. Srinivasa Iyengar: Religion as a Political Instrument
S. Srinivasa Iyengar warned that religion had become an instrument for secular ambition and political rivalry. His intervention exposed an enduring difficulty: laws ostensibly enacted to protect faith may be used by political organisations seeking influence over their communities or concessions from the state.
C. Hari Singh Gour: Intention and Blasphemy
Hari Singh Gour argued that the proposed law effectively created a new form of defamation—defamation of religion—and could therefore be described more honestly as a blasphemy provision.
He distinguished express intention from the legal presumption that a person intends the natural consequences of an act. To prevent confusion, the law had to require a specific and conscious purpose.
Gour strongly defended scientific historical writing and social reform. A person should not face criminal prosecution merely for expressing an opinion formed after research or for advocating improvement in religious practice.
D. Conversion and the Deeper Causes of Polemical Publication
Jayakar and other members connected the pamphlet wars with competing conversion movements. Publications were frequently designed to prevent members of one community from converting to another or to answer accusations made by missionaries and polemicists.
They warned that legislation directed only towards publications would not resolve coercion, deception, proselytisation, or the political conditions sustaining the conflict.
E. The Select Committee and “Deliberate and Malicious”
The Select Committee recognised that an author might intentionally shock believers in good faith for the purpose of social reform. It therefore expanded the requirement of deliberate intention by adding malice.
Its report explained that criticism might be harsh and consciously provocative without being criminal if its object was reform rather than religious hatred. The eventual formulation was designed to be comprehensive but “not too wide” in application.[16]
The enacted provision punished only a person who, with deliberate and malicious intention to outrage the religious feelings of a class, insulted or attempted to insult its religion or religious beliefs.
F. Minutes of Dissent
Several members remained dissatisfied. They described the bill as a concession to intolerance and predicted that it could strengthen fanaticism rather than restrain it.
N. C. Kelkar proposed an express exception protecting criticism intended to investigate truth, improve society, or promote social and religious reform. Although the exception was not included, it accurately captured the limiting purpose later attributed to the words “deliberate and malicious.”
A. Rangaswami Iyengar, K.C. Roy, B.Das and others worried about the position of printers who might publish material without sharing an author’s purpose. They also questioned whether existing provisions governing incitement, hatred, and breach of peace were already sufficient.
Section 295A was nevertheless enacted through the Criminal Law Amendment Act, 1927.
XXI. Violence after the Enactment of Section 295A
The new law did not eliminate blasphemy-related violence.
In 1931, a publisher was attacked over a schoolbook containing an image of the Prophet Muhammad in conversation with the angel Gabriel. The attackers reportedly drew inspiration from Ilm-ud-Din’s elevation as a religious martyr.
In 1934, Nathuram Rama Sharma was murdered by Abdul Qayum while awaiting proceedings connected with his conviction under Section 295A for a publication on Islamic history.
In 1938, a Hindu Sabha official named Khanna narrowly survived an attack in Ahmedabad.
These incidents supported the concern expressed during the legislative debates: a criminal law acknowledging religious insult as a uniquely serious wrong could coexist with, or even reinforce, an extrajudicial culture in which believers regarded violence as an appropriate additional punishment.
XXII. The Constitution and the First Amendment
The Constitution guaranteed freedom of speech and expression under Article 19(1)(a), while Article 19(2) authorised specified restrictions.
The Constitution (First Amendment) Act, 1951, expressly required restrictions to be “reasonable” and added grounds including public order, friendly relations with foreign states, and incitement to an offence.
Syama Prasad Mookerjee warned that the amended language could permit extensive governmental control over expression. Although the term “reasonable restriction” was not precisely defined in the Constitution, later judicial decisions developed tests of proportionality, proximity, and constitutional nexus.
XXIII. Ramji Lal Modi v State of Uttar Pradesh
The constitutional validity of Section 295A was considered by a Constitution Bench in Ramji Lal Modi v State of Uttar Pradesh, AIR 1957 SC 620: 1957 SCR 860: 1957 Cri LJ 1006.[17]
Ramji Lal Modi was the editor, printer, and publisher of Gaurakshak, a periodical devoted to cow protection. An article published in the magazine led to his prosecution under Sections 153A and 295A.
The Sessions Court acquitted him under Section 153A but convicted him under Section 295A, sentencing him to eighteen months’ rigorous imprisonment and a fine of ₹2,000. The Allahabad High Court affirmed the conviction but reduced the sentence.
Modi petitioned the Supreme Court under Article 32. He argued that Section 295A was overbroad because it did not require public disorder to occur or to be a proximate consequence of the insult.
The Court rejected the challenge. It relied upon the breadth of the expression “in the interests of public order” in Article 19(2). A law did not have to require an actual breach of peace if the prohibited conduct possessed a tendency to cause public disorder.
The Court also relied upon the limiting words of the provision. Section 295A applied only to aggravated insults perpetrated with deliberate and malicious intention.
The judgment remains the principal authority sustaining the constitutionality of the offence. Its “tendency” reasoning, however, is difficult to reconcile fully with later cases requiring a real and proximate connection between speech and public disorder.
XXIV. The Proximity Doctrine in Ram Manohar Lohia
Three years later, the Supreme Court considered the meaning of public order in Superintendent, Central Prison, Fatehgarh v Ram Manohar Lohia, AIR 1960 SC 633: (1960) 2 SCR 821.[18]
The Court distinguished among law and order, public order, and the security of the state. These were subsequently represented as concentric circles:
• law and order is the widest category;
• public order lies within it; and
• the security of the state is the narrowest and most serious category.
Not every violation of law affects public order. A private quarrel may concern law and order but have no wider effect upon the life of the community.
The Court further held that a restriction upon expression must possess a proximate and reasonable nexus with public order. Remote, hypothetical, fanciful, or problematic connections are insufficient.
This principle significantly qualifies the broad “tendency” language in Ramji Lal Modi. Applied rigorously, it requires courts to identify how the accused expression created a real threat to public tranquillity rather than merely assuming that religious offence may eventually produce violence.
XXV. Context, Social Reform, and Sujato Bhadra v State of West Bengal
The most elaborate judicial consideration of the expressions “deliberate and malicious” appears in Sujato Bhadra v State of West Bengal, (2005) 4 CHN 601: 2006 Cri LJ 368.[19]
The case concerned the forfeiture of Taslima Nasreen’s Dwikhandita, not Lajja as sometimes stated. The book criticised the relationship between religion, state power, and the condition of women in Bangladesh.
The Calcutta High Court held that both deliberateness and malice must be established. Expression that is unwitting, careless, or devoid of malicious purpose does not fall within the provision.
More importantly, the Court recognised that a writer may knowingly administer a “shock” to believers for the purpose of social reform. If the object is the emancipation of women, the exposure of injustice, or the revitalisation of society, intentional offence does not necessarily become deliberate and malicious outrage.
The Court relied upon the 1927 Select Committee report and insisted that the work be read as a whole. Isolated passages could not be detached from the book’s theme, context, audience, nationality, or reformative purpose.
The judgment provides a principled framework for literary and academic cases:
1. the entire work must be examined;
2. the relevant class of Indian citizens must be identified;
3. intention must be derived from context;
4. deliberateness and malice must coexist;
5. reformative or scholarly purpose may negate malice; and
6. harsh language alone is not conclusive.
XXVI. Discussion, Advocacy, and Incitement
In Shreya Singhal v Union of India, (2015) 5 SCC 1: AIR 2015 SC 1523, the Supreme Court distinguished among discussion, advocacy, and incitement.[20]
Discussion and advocacy, including advocacy of unpopular views, remain at the heart of Article 19(1)(a). Restriction becomes constitutionally permissible when expression reaches the level of incitement.
Although Shreya Singhal concerned the Information Technology Act, its formulation is relevant to religious-offence cases. Criticism of scripture, theology, historical conduct, or religious practice may be offensive and may advocate radical reform. It should not become criminal unless the required statutory intention is established and the expression crosses the constitutional threshold of incitement or serious public disorder.
The Supreme Court has also reiterated the limited scope of Section 295A in subsequent cases. In Mahendra Singh Dhoni v Yerraguntla Shyamsundar, (2017) 7 SCC 760, the Court held that only aggravated forms of insult accompanied by deliberate and malicious intention attract the offence.
In Priya Prakash Varrier v State of Telangana, (2019) 12 SCC 432, criminal proceedings were quashed because the impugned representation did not display the calculated intention required by Section 295A.
These decisions reinforce the proposition that subjective hurt alone is not the offence.
XXVII. Multiple Proceedings and the Procedural Burden of Prosecution
Religious-offence provisions are capable of imposing substantial punishment even without conviction.
Complaints concerning the same expression may be filed in different states. An accused may be required to seek bail, respond to summonses, and pursue quashing petitions in multiple jurisdictions.
In Amish Devgan v Union of India, seven FIRs were registered in several states over the same broadcast. The Supreme Court consolidated the proceedings while examining the relationship among hate speech, community dignity, intention, and public order.[21]
The burden of geographically dispersed litigation can produce a chilling effect. Authors, scholars, artists, filmmakers, and publishers may self-censor not because conviction is probable, but because the process is expensive, time-consuming, and physically dangerous.
The statutory requirement of government sanction before a court takes cognisance was intended as a safeguard. It does not, however, necessarily prevent the registration of an FIR, investigation, arrest, or public harassment before cognisance.
A meaningful safeguard therefore requires scrutiny at the earliest stage, not merely after investigation has been completed.
XXVIII. From Section 295A IPC to Section 299 BNS
The Indian Penal Code was replaced by the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023, with effect from 1 July 2024.[22]
Section 299 of the BNS substantially reproduces Section 295A. It punishes words, signs, visible representations, electronic means, or other forms of expression used with deliberate and malicious intention to outrage the religious feelings of a class by insulting its religion or beliefs.
The offence carries imprisonment extending to three years, a fine, or both. It is classified as cognisable and non-bailable and is triable by a Magistrate of the First Class.[23]
Section 217 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita requires previous sanction of the Central or State Government before a court can take cognisance of an offence under Section 299. The government may direct a preliminary investigation by an officer not below the rank of Inspector before granting sanction.[24]
The enactment of the BNS therefore did not remove the colonial offence or materially narrow its language. The constitutional questions surrounding Section 295A remain applicable to Section 299.
XXIX. Comparative Approaches to Blasphemy Law
Blasphemy law developed historically within Christian European legal systems and was initially associated with the protection of established religion and public authority.
England and Wales abolished the common-law offences of blasphemy and blasphemous libel through the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008.[25]
The Scottish Parliament abolished the common-law offence through the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act 2021. The relevant provisions came into force in April 2024. Scotland nevertheless retains offences directed towards the stirring up of religious hatred, illustrating the distinction between protecting believers from hatred and protecting religious doctrines from criticism.[26]
The United States has no valid federal blasphemy offence because governmental punishment of religious criticism would conflict with the First Amendment.
Blasphemy and religious-insult provisions nevertheless remain widespread. A 2023 survey by the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom identified legislation of this kind in ninety-five countries.[27]
The United Nations Human Rights Committee has stated that prohibitions upon displays of disrespect towards religion or systems of belief are generally incompatible with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, except where expression falls within the narrow prohibitions concerning advocacy of religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility, or violence.[28]
The international distinction is therefore between:
• criticism, ridicule, rejection, or denial of a religion; and
• incitement against persons because of their religious identity.
Indian law has not always maintained this distinction clearly.
XXX. Conceptual Problems in the Offence
A. The Undefined Scope of Religion
Neither the former Penal Code nor the Constitution provides a single exhaustive definition of religion. Judicial attempts to define it have focused upon belief, doctrine, conscience, ritual, and the relationship between the individual and the transcendent.
In S. P. Mittal v Union of India, (1983) 1 SCC 51, the Supreme Court acknowledged the difficulty of defining religion with precision.[29]
This uncertainty matters because Section 299 protects not only established religions but also “religious beliefs.” The category may expand according to the claims of complainants and the interpretations of police officers.
B. Essential Religious Practices
In M. Ismail Faruqui v Union of India, (1994) 6 SCC 360, the Supreme Court considered the constitutional protection afforded to religious places and practices.[30] The broader essential-practices jurisprudence requires courts to determine whether particular conduct is fundamental to a religion.
A secular court must therefore interpret doctrine in order to decide what counts as religion and what deserves legal protection. The exercise can unintentionally transform judges into arbiters of theological authenticity.
C. The Subjectivity of Hurt
Religious feeling is inherently personal. The same text may produce devotion, disagreement, indifference, ridicule, or anger among members of the same community.
If hurt alone is sufficient, criminal liability becomes dependent upon the most sensitive reader. The statutory requirement of deliberate and malicious intention is intended to prevent this outcome.
D. The Heckler’s Veto
The most serious danger arises when the state suppresses expression because an audience threatens violence. The more aggressive the threatened response, the stronger the case for censorship becomes.
This reverses the proper order of law. The state should restrain those threatening violence rather than penalise a speaker merely because violence has been threatened.
The Supreme Court has rejected such a surrender of expression to hostile audiences in decisions including S. Rangarajan v P. Jagjivan Ram, (1989) 2 SCC 574, holding that freedom cannot be suppressed unless the anticipated danger is proximate and inseparably connected with the expression.[31]
XXXI. A Framework for Reform
The history of Rangila Rasul and the latter case law suggest that Section 299 should either be repealed or substantially narrowed.
1. Require a Specific and Dominant Malicious Purpose
The prosecution should establish that outraging religious feelings was the sole, primary, or at least dominant and conscious purpose of the expression.
Knowledge that offence may result is insufficient. An historian may know that archival findings will disturb believers; a reformer may deliberately challenge a practice; and an artist may consciously provoke reflection. None is necessarily malicious.
2. Read the Work as a Whole
Books, films, lectures, paintings, and social-media posts should be examined in context. Isolated words must not be separated from the full work, its audience, its genre, and its intellectual purpose.
This principle follows directly from Sujato Bhadra.
3. Protect Scholarship and Reform Expressly
The statute should contain an express exception for:
• historical and archaeological inquiry;
• academic research;
• criticism of doctrine;
• theological disagreement;
• social and religious reform;
• artistic and literary expression;
• satire not amounting to incitement;
• scientific discussion; and
• good-faith publication in the public interest.
Such an exception would revive the safeguard proposed by N. C. Kelkar in 1927.
4. Require Proximity to Serious Public Disorder
The prosecution should demonstrate a real, direct, and proximate connection between the expression and serious public disorder.
A remote possibility that somebody may react violently is insufficient. Disorder engineered by selective amplification, misleading translation, posters, or inflammatory speeches should not automatically be attributed to the original author.
5. Distinguish Hurt from Incitement
The constitutional distinction among discussion, advocacy, and incitement should govern application of the offence.
The law should intervene where expression intentionally mobilises hostility or violence against persons. It should not protect doctrines, founders, or scriptures from criticism merely because believers experience offence.
6. Investigate the Complete Chain of Provocation
Where a publication is retaliatory, the state should investigate the earlier material and the subsequent mobilisation. Selective prosecution of the less violent community produces unequal law.
This does not justify retaliation. It ensures that legal responsibility is not allocated solely according to which group is more capable of public disorder.
7. Punish Threats and Extrajudicial Calls
Threats of beheading, religious execution, mob violence, destruction of property, or Sharia-based punishment must be prosecuted independently and promptly.
The existence of an allegedly offensive statement does not diminish the criminality of a death threat.
8. Protect Persons under Threat
The state’s duty does not end with prosecuting a speaker. Persons facing credible threats require protection even when their words are provocative or unlawful.
The murders of Rajpal and later figures demonstrate that detention or prosecution of the speaker does not neutralise the threat of assassination.
9. Prevent Multiple Proceedings
All complaints arising from the same publication or broadcast should ordinarily be consolidated in one jurisdiction. Repetitive FIRs should not become a method of punishment through process.
10. Strengthen the Sanction Requirement
Government sanction should be preceded by a reasoned legal assessment addressing:
• the allegedly offending expression;
• the complete context;
• the identified religious class;
• evidence of deliberateness;
• evidence of malice;
• the relationship with public order;
• the relevance of scholarship or reform; and
• the constitutional distinction between advocacy and incitement.
The sanction order should be subject to effective judicial review.
XXXII. Conclusion
Section 295A did not arise from an abstract philosophical attempt to define the legitimate boundaries of religious criticism. It emerged from a particular colonial crisis.
The crisis involved competing religious publications, conversion and reconversion campaigns, communal electorates, the political mobilisation of the ulema, processional disputes, mass meetings, threats of extrajudicial religious punishment, riots, and pressure upon the colonial executive.
Justice Dalip Singh’s judgment in Raj Paul v Emperor identified a genuine defect in the prosecution’s case. Section 153A did not criminalise every attack upon a deceased religious teacher. More importantly, the judge recognised that historical and academic inquiry could not depend upon the emotional response of believers.
The colonial legislature answered the controversy by creating a new offence but inserted the words “deliberate and malicious” to protect good-faith criticism and social reform. Indian legislators explicitly warned that an overbroad offence would reward intolerance and intensify fanaticism.
The subsequent history of the provision has vindicated those fears. Religious-insult complaints can be multiplied across jurisdictions, invoked against scholarship and art, and used to make the legal process itself punitive. The possibility of violence by an audience often exerts greater influence than the actual intention of the speaker.
At the same time, the statutory language, legislative history, and later jurisprudence provide resources for a narrower approach. Ram Manohar Lohia requires proximity to public order. Sujato Bhadra protects reformative purpose and contextual reading. Shreya Singhal protects discussion and advocacy unless they become incitement. Mahendra Singh Dhoni and Priya Prakash Varrier confirm that only aggravated, calculated, and malicious insults fall within the offence.
Now contained in Section 299 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, the law should not function as a general protection of religions from scrutiny. Its legitimate field, if any, is the intentional use of religious insult as an instrument for producing serious communal hostility or disorder.
A constitutional democracy cannot allow the most easily offended or most violent audience to determine the permissible boundaries of history, theology, art, and public debate. Equal law requires the state to protect persons from incitement and violence while leaving ideas, doctrines, institutions, founders, and historical claims open to investigation, criticism, disagreement, and reform.
Footnotes
[1] The publication history and surrounding controversy are examined in Neeti Nair, “Beyond the ‘Communal’ 1920s: The Problem of Intention, Legislative Pragmatism, and the Making of Section 295A of the Indian Penal Code,” Indian Economic & Social History Review 50, no. 3 (2013): 317–340; and Gene R. Thursby, Hindu-Muslim Relations in British India: A Study of Controversy, Conflict, and Communal Movements in Northern India, 1923–1928 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1975). Nair confirms that the Rangila Rasul controversy precipitated the insertion of Section 295A.
[2] Raj Paul v Emperor, 1927 SCC OnLine Lah 304: AIR 1927 Lah 590. The formal citation and date of the decision are independently reported in legal commentary and cited in later Allahabad proceedings.
[3] The Select Committee’s explanation for adding malice is reproduced and judicially considered in Sujato Bhadra v State of West Bengal, (2005) 4 CHN 601: 2006 Cri LJ 368.
[4] Ramji Lal Modi v State of Uttar Pradesh, AIR 1957 SC 620: 1957 SCR 860: 1957 Cri LJ 1006.
[5] Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023, s 299; Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023, First Schedule and s 217. The BNS came into force on 1 July 2024.
[6] Ajay Verghese and Roberto Stefan Foa, “Precolonial Ethnic Violence: The Case of Hindu-Muslim Conflict in India,” draft paper, 5 November 2018. The work challenges explanations locating the origin of all Hindu–Muslim violence exclusively in colonial rule.
[7] David N. Lorenzen, “Who Invented Hinduism?” Comparative Studies in Society and History 41, no. 4 (1999): 630–659.
[8] Sunthar Visuvalingam and Elizabeth Chalier-Visuvalingam, “Hindu-Muslim Relations in Colonial Banaras,” reconstruction of the 1809 Lāṭ Bhairava conflict.
[9] B. R. Ambedkar, Pakistan or the Partition of India (Bombay: Thacker & Co., 1945), especially the chapters examining the Khilafat movement and Hindu–Muslim political relations.
[10] M. K. Gandhi’s comments on communal slogans and mutual religious restraint are collected in Gandhi and Communal Problems. The available compilation confirms his discussion of the fear produced by “Vande Mataram,” “Jai Bharat,” and related slogans and his position on cow slaughter.
[11] Thursby, Hindu-Muslim Relations in British India. Bibliographic details are confirmed by Brill and contemporary scholarly reviews.
[12] Ambedkar, Pakistan or the Partition of India, ch 7.
[13] Raj Paul v Emperor, 1927 SCC OnLine Lah 304: AIR 1927 Lah 590.
[14] Kali Charan Sharma v King-Emperor, AIR 1927 All 649; Kali Charan Sharma v King-Emperor, AIR 1927 All 654. The latter judgment records the conviction, sentence, and disagreement with the Lahore approach.
[15] Ilam Din v Emperor, AIR 1930 Lah 157. The reported judgment identifies Rajpal’s murder on 6 April 1929 and refers to the earlier Rangila Rasul litigation.
[16] Report of the Select Committee, Gazette of India, 17 September 1927, as reproduced in Sujato Bhadra, (2005) 4 CHN 601.
[17] Ramji Lal Modi v State of Uttar Pradesh, AIR 1957 SC 620: 1957 SCR 860: 1957 Cri LJ 1006. The Court’s record confirms the Article 32 challenge, the earlier conviction, and its conclusion that Section 295A was protected by Article 19(2).
[18] Superintendent, Central Prison, Fatehgarh v Ram Manohar Lohia, AIR 1960 SC 633: (1960) 2 SCR 821. The Court expressly required a proximate and reasonable nexus with public order.
[19] Sujato Bhadra v State of West Bengal, (2005) 4 CHN 601: 2006 Cri LJ 368. The case concerned Taslima Nasreen’s Dwikhandita.
[20] Shreya Singhal v Union of India, (2015) 5 SCC 1: AIR 2015 SC 1523.
[21] Amish Devgan v Union of India, 2020 SCC OnLine SC 994. The proceedings concerned multiple FIRs in several states arising from one broadcast.
[22] India Code records 1 July 2024 as the enforcement date of the BNS.
[23] Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023, s 299; Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023, First Schedule.
[24] Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023, s 217.
[25] Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008, s 79.
[26] Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act 2021, s 16; commencement from 1 April 2024.
[27] United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, Legislation Factsheet: Blasphemy—2023 Update(September 2023).
[28] UN Human Rights Committee, General Comment No 34, CCPR/C/GC/34, para 48.
[29] S. P. Mittal v Union of India, (1983) 1 SCC 51.
[30] M. Ismail Faruqui v Union of India, (1994) 6 SCC 360.
[31] S. Rangarajan v P. Jagjivan Ram, (1989) 2 SCC 574.
Bibliography
Primary Legal Materials
Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023.
Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023.
Constitution (First Amendment) Act, 1951.
Constitution of India.
Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008 (United Kingdom).
Criminal Law Amendment Act, 1927.
Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act 2021.
Indian Penal Code, 1860.
Report of the Select Committee on the Bill to Amend the Indian Penal Code, Gazette of India, 17 September 1927.
UN Human Rights Committee. General Comment No 34: Article 19—Freedoms of Opinion and Expression. CCPR/C/GC/34, 2011.
Cases
Amish Devgan v Union of India, 2020 SCC OnLine SC 994.
Ilam Din v Emperor, AIR 1930 Lah 157.
Kali Charan Sharma v King-Emperor, AIR 1927 All 649.
Kali Charan Sharma v King-Emperor, AIR 1927 All 654.
Mahendra Singh Dhoni v Yerraguntla Shyamsundar, (2017) 7 SCC 760.
M. Ismail Faruqui v Union of India, (1994) 6 SCC 360.
Priya Prakash Varrier v State of Telangana, (2019) 12 SCC 432.
Raj Paul v Emperor, 1927 SCC OnLine Lah 304: AIR 1927 Lah 590.
Ramji Lal Modi v State of Uttar Pradesh, AIR 1957 SC 620: 1957 SCR 860.
S. P. Mittal v Union of India, (1983) 1 SCC 51.
S. Rangarajan v P. Jagjivan Ram, (1989) 2 SCC 574.
Shreya Singhal v Union of India, (2015) 5 SCC 1: AIR 2015 SC 1523.
Sujato Bhadra v State of West Bengal, (2005) 4 CHN 601: 2006 Cri LJ 368.
Superintendent, Central Prison, Fatehgarh v Ram Manohar Lohia, AIR 1960 SC 633: (1960) 2 SCR 821.
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Ambedkar, B. R. Pakistan or the Partition of India. Bombay: Thacker & Co., 1945.
Gandhi, M. K. Gandhi and Communal Problems. Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House.
Gandhi, M. K. Young India. Various issues, 1919–1931.
Lorenzen, David N. “Who Invented Hinduism?” Comparative Studies in Society and History 41, no. 4 (1999): 630–659.
Lorenzen, David N. Who Invented Hinduism? Essays on Religion in History. New Delhi: Yoda Press, 2006.
McLachlan, Elizabeth. “The Story of Section 295-A: A Law and Literature Approach.” Graduate research paper, University of Calgary, 2017.
Nair, Neeti. “Beyond the ‘Communal’ 1920s: The Problem of Intention, Legislative Pragmatism, and the Making of Section 295A of the Indian Penal Code.” Indian Economic & Social History Review 50, no. 3 (2013): 317–340.
Thursby, Gene R. Hindu-Muslim Relations in British India: A Study of Controversy, Conflict, and Communal Movements in Northern India, 1923–1928. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1975.
Verghese, Ajay. The Colonial Origins of Ethnic Violence in India. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2016.
Verghese, Ajay, and Roberto Stefan Foa. “Precolonial Ethnic Violence: The Case of Hindu-Muslim Conflict in India.” Draft paper, 2018.
Visuvalingam, Sunthar, and Elizabeth Chalier-Visuvalingam. “Hindu-Muslim Relations in Colonial Banaras: The Lāṭ Bhairava Riots of 1809.”
United States Commission on International Religious Freedom. Legislation Factsheet: Blasphemy—2023 Update. Washington, DC: USCIRF, 2023.
Unpublished Source
Tanya. “The Rangeela Rasool Case and the Birth of IPC Section 295A: The Indian Variant of Blasphemy Law.”- https://youtu.be/4HFXNAcQgJw?si=cjSe9YRXoa8kaYfJ
