Legal Polysemy: On the Emergence of an Autocratic Hermeneutics of Hate Speech in India

Abstract

This paper analyses hate speech accusations in India as a polysemic discourse. Polysemy refers to a process whereby languages encode new referents or alter the encoding of existing ones (Wang 1979, 72). This process results in the same words or terminologies being imbued with distinct meanings even within the same historical or geographic space.  In India, the cultural and political polysemy of the term “hate speech” has emerged as a fruitful ground for the political production of an autocratic hermeneutics of incitement, which is used by government representatives to rewrite the meaning of criminal offences in line with a Hindu nationalist agenda. In this paper, I draw on extensive, multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork with defence lawyers, street-level police bureaucrats, hate speech accused, hate speech complainants, and their communities to explore the polysemic use of the term “hate speech” at different levels of the Indian legal system.  Since Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) came to power in 2014 the use of hostile and threatening modes of speech against religious minorities like Muslims has been on the rise (Reuters April 22. 2024). At the same time, representatives of the Modi government have systematically accused the Indian Supreme Court of disregarding incidents of hateful language directed at Hindus by religious minorities (Livelaw, March 28, 2023).