Sentiment, Politics, Censorship: The State of Hurt - Tapa dura

[The book] delineates how “hurt” is felt and constructed, what “sentiment” mean and where it comes from, and how Indian politics and the nature of its media shape the creation and response  to “hurtful” speech.

(Business Standard, 4 February 2016)

The editors deserve applause for taking bold stances...this book, thus assumes a focal importance for anyone involved in work and discussions around issues related to free speech, violence and the law.

(Social Change, Volume 47 (Issue 1), March 2017)

Their book explores the question of bodily feeling, of sentiment and its inevitable entwinement with politics and censorship in the current Indian scenario.... The collection of essays in this book coming from a wide range of intellectuals offer a well-balanced perspective on an issue that has become more relevant now than ever.

(The Book Review, August 2016)

A refreshing read in terms of its take on the issue of hate speech, hurt, and politics of it. The currency of “hurt” as a claim to, and pretext for, political correctionism—and often taking recourse to the logic of the antipopular as anti-State—has erected a machinery of censorship governed by the economies and excesses of a “marketplace of outrage.” This volume seeks to map this ready vocabulary of a potential victimhood and its consequent excuse for repressive regimes of State vigilantism. It investigates the ways in which such “hurt” is expressed and abetted by the State or its actors, staged by popular media and often subsumed as public opinion. It builds the necessary structure of argument around the idea of “hurt” with reference to recent political events, the history of sentimental mobilizations and various kinds of censorship attempts in India.