"I'm genuinely on the fence on this one. My only claim is that one legitimate argument to do it (censor inflammatory rhetoric) does exist. Depending on the specific case, that reason may be outweighed by more significant arguments."
Laws are written as general documents. You don't write laws that say: "Censorship is supposed to be done by the government on a case by case basis after careful analysis of the case."
At least we don't do this in the West. As a result we have a stable democratic system. Having a stable democratic system is a way to have a peaceful society where communal riots aren't commonplace.
Unfortunately I don't know enough about the dynamics of Indian communal politics to give recommendation about how India should specifically deal with it.
The Wikipedia summary suggests that there a provision in India to censure speech to protect the public order. That seems much more targeted at riots than provisions about speech against minorities (hate speech laws).
On the other hand, consider that in the 20th century, England, the land of consequentialists, survived, while Germany, the land of deontologists, collapsed. Dewey seems to have thought considering ethics to be a form of duty is not entirely unrelated with the rise of militarism: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/42208
Like I said, I agree on the necessity of uniform laws. But first, we must determine which laws would be good laws to apply uniformly. To do that, we must consider the relative importance of cases where censorship leads to good consequences.
Thoug...
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