This document discusses censorship in India. It defines censorship as the attempt to suppress or regulate public access to material considered offensive or harmful. Censorship aims to alter, remove, or suppress ideas, material, or information that is believed to be objectionable. In India, censorship occurs in various areas like libraries, movies, books, newspapers, the internet, and media. Reasons for censorship include protecting family values, religion, and political views. However, censorship can also be a means of suppression and removing freedom of choice. The document examines how censorship has affected areas like the press, films, books, internet, and media in India. It discusses debates around when censorship may be justified versus when it can violate principles of freedom of

1. Ethics and Values
Title
Censorship in India

2. Prepared By
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3. Censorship
 Think of a book or movie that has influenced
you in some way
 What would be lost if no one could ever read
the book or see the movie again?
 That is probably happened once or twice or
many time around us.

4. What is Censorship?
‘The attempt to supress or regulate public access to
material considered offensive or harmful.’
Control – of information, material and ideas circulated
within a society
Censorship is a term often associated with
totalitarianism, socialism, or anything but democracy.

5. What is Censorship?
While the definition of censorship has changed over
centuries, the basic idea behind it is simple and has gone
untouched: the protection of the most basic civil
institutions of the family, the religion, and the country.

6. Why censor?
 Alter
 Remove or
 Suppress
ideas , material or information that is believed
to be objectionable or offensive.

7. Why censor?
 Alter –
 When any content is changed due to any reason and the
original content is replaced by the changed content, then this
type of censorship is called ‘Alter’
 Remove –
 In this type of censorship, the content is fully removed and
is no longer for any use.
 Suppress –
 If any content is available for limited people only. In this
type of censorship, usually the content is disclosed to the
authorized personals only.

8. Where does censorship take
place?
 Libraries
 Movies
 Books, Novels etc.
 Newspaper or other reading materials

9. Reasons for Censorship
 Family values: Adult content, family filters, privacy
policies
 Religion: content that may cause differences
between various religious group, and may
harm people’s religious feelings.
 Political views: content which is harmful to
national peace.

10. Is censorship ever “good?”
 Can be used to protect people/interests in matters of
national security/inappropriate material for
children.
 However, it can also be used as a means of
suppression/agenda setting.
 Some artists feel that it is an infringement upon
their rights.
 It removes freedom of choice in some cases

11. Areas which are affected
 Press
 The Indian Press currently has extensive freedom.
 the freedom of press was not always as today.
 In 1975, the Indira Gandhi government imposed
censorship of press during The Emergency. It was
removed at the end of emergency rule in March 1977. On
1975, the day after the emergency was imposed

12. Areas which are affected
 Film
 The Central Board for Film Certification, the regulatory
film body of India, regularly orders directors to remove
anything seems offensive, including violence or subjects
considered politically subversive.
 Many movies like Vishvaroopam, Fanna, The Da Vinci
code, The Girl with the dragon tattoo and many other
movies list goes on…

13. Censorship on Movies
 For example,
 In movie field, the list is much longer like, Rangarasia, The
Benedict Queen, ‘Da Vinci Code’, Water, Fire.

14. Areas which are affected
 Internet :
 Majority of censorship is used in the field of internet
because internet has touched every aspect of our life.
 Most of the countries are having wide spread internet
connections for its citizens. In this way everyone is using
internet for everything.
 But there are certain kind of information that should not be
available for every internet users.
 In this way, internet censorship is widely justified.
 Some websites are only accessible to certain authorities.

15. Areas which are affected
 Books
 There is different case in the censorship related to books.
 Before any book is published, it’s content is just
information. But after it gets published, the information gets
available more people.
 Sometimes, the author’s language or the book’s content may
harm people’s feeling or is supporting negativity.
 So, in this case, the book may be banned in some areas.

16. Censorship in Books
 For example, ‘Da Vinci Code’, authorized by Dan Brown
was banned in some areas after it got published because it’s
content was effecting negativity on some people’s religious
believes.

17. Areas which are affected
 Media:
 In ideal conditions, media should not be censored in any
situation because this is the medium through which,
common man gets awareness.
 But in some critical situations, printed as well as social
media is censored because people gets panic easily by false
information.

18. 
As a
community, we are
heavily influenced
by the media and
other sources of
information.
Media influence on society:

19.  Media to be censored for children:
 Political agendas:
 Security of secrets:
 Curbing the spread of wrong
information:
 Propagating Ignorance:
 Shaping the young minds:
 Freedom of speech:
 Modified Truth:
 Hinders Creativity:

20. Censorship on Media
 For example,
 In Gujarat, recently internet and mobile data was banned
due to ‘Patel Andolan’
 Before independence, many Indian news papers were
banned.

21.  So who gets to be the judge of what is appropriate on a social level and
what is not? Is it a handful of people sitting in a room and declaring what
is and what isn’t right according to their ideologies? In the name of moral
values, must we keep the society from progressing by claiming certain
ideas to be against our “culture”. Must we cling to age old norms in the
name of culture and censor what doesn’t please Indian values? How can a
society and a country progress on an international level if we don’t
inculcate newer trends and censor everything that doesn’t agree with
“Indian culture”.

24. Areas which are affected
 Other areas can be also effected under
censorship like
 Music
 Drama
 Etc.

26. When is censorship justified?
Censorship is justified in many cases, as it seeks to
maintain social stability, racial harmony and to protect
the young minds from dangerous materials in movies.
However, once misused, censorship can violate human
rights principles of freedom of speech and freedom of
expression.
Due to complexity of censorship, the government needs
to be prudent in using censorship to the best interest of
the society.

27. Losses due to censorship
 Censorship is the suppression of Freedom of speech.
 Censorship in all its forms is often unjustifiable and is used
simply to stop truths or ideas emerge which draw attention
to powerful people or governments, or undermine
ideology. This is inexcusable.
 Sometimes it ruins the creativity or artistic effectiveness of
the thing.

28. Thank you