India in the age of contempt

Are contempt proceedings the best way of protecting the dignity of the court?

India is unusual among the major democracies to retain laws that criminalise free speech and give the state wide powers to punish it. The laws include sedition, criminal defamation and contempt.

Sri Lanka abolished criminal defamation a few years ago and England and Wales abolished contempt as an offence. Sedition in the way that it is understood and practised in India has three problems. The first is, of course, the law itself, which is a relic from the colonial period. The other is its free and liberal use by those offended by speech that is not seditious. The third is