Dissenting against the Defence of India Rules: Emergency Regulations and the Space of Extreme Government Action.

Indian democracy has been plagued by a long history of ‘rules’ and ‘acts’, defined broadly as assigning to the state the power to impose order, but without clear guidelines as to their use. Understanding agitations against these rules and acts is helpful in seeing a line of challenge to state authority from the position of democracy. This paper will describe the agitations by the All India Newspaper Editors’ Conference (AINEC) against Article 41 of the Defence of India Rules (1939), which focused on the government's ability to censor, ban and fine newspapers. AINEC's fight made visible the effect of capricious and unpredictable government actions on actors outside the elite. In addition, the shifts in censorship brought about by the Defence of India Rules highlighted how groups, ideas or writing could shift from being regarded as ‘responsible’ and credible to ‘irresponsible’ and dangerous on the basis of state decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]