Redefining Aravallis: Theft of the Commons

Shirin Akhter | 25 Dec 2025

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What is at stake is not simply environmental damage, but the erosion of natural rights: of communities to land, water, livelihood, and a sustainable future.

Aravalli Range in Rajasthan. Image Courtesy: Wikimedia Commons

The recent judicial executive move to impose a narrow, height-based definition of the Aravalli Range marks a troubling moment in India’s environmental governance. Traditionally, the Aravallis were understood as a continuous mountain system stretching over hundreds of kilometres from Delhi through Haryana and Rajasthan into Gujarat, across dozens of districts as an interconnected range that forms a natural barrier against desertification, supports rivers and watersheds, and sustains biodiversity and local livelihoods.

This ecological continuity reflected in historical geographic characterisations of the Aravalli Range, as a continuous fold mountain belt running from Delhi to Ahmedabad, has underpinned legal and conservation frameworks that treated the hills and their attendant ridges, foreshore landforms, and catchment areas as an indivisible whole. By recognising only landforms rising 100 metres or more above the surrounding terrain as “Aravalli hills,” the State has reduced one of the world’s oldest and most fragile ecological systems to a cartographic abstraction. What is projected as scientific clarity is, in effect, ecological amnesia, carrying grave consequences for environmental protection, federalism, and democratic accountability.

Opposition leaders have been unequivocal in flagging the dangers of this exercise. Congress leader and former Union Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh has described the redefinition as a bureaucratic sleight of hand that quietly erases large swathes of the Aravallis from legal protection without any transparent public debate on ecological costs. This arbitrary vertical threshold forgets that the Aravallis function as a continuous ecological system, where low-lying hills, forested ridges, scrublands, and catchment areas together sustain groundwater recharge, regulate dust and temperature, and support biodiversity across Rajasthan, Haryana, Delhi, and Gujarat.

By tying protection to height, the State effectively decouples ecology from law. This is precisely what environmentalists and Opposition voices warn against. Former Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot has pointed out that the move opens the door to renewed mining and real-estate pressures in precisely those zones that have historically borne the brunt of ecological destruction. These are areas that may not tower dramatically above the landscape but are indispensable to the integrity of the range. To exclude them is to hollow out protection while claiming compliance.

Mining Contracts and Political Economy of Redefinition

The redefinition cannot be understood outside the political economy of mining contracts. The Aravallis are mined not for strategic minerals but for quartzite, stone, sand, aggregates, and limestone, the raw materials of highways, flyovers, luxury housing, and urban infrastructure. These are low-value minerals extracted in high volumes, classified as “minor minerals,” and, therefore, governed by weaker regulatory scrutiny. Redrawing the legal boundary of what constitutes the Aravallis directly affects which parcels of land can be leased, auctioned, or diverted with ease. 

This is where the government’s clarification assumes significance. While asserting that the new definition applies only to mining, and reiterating that mining is prohibited in the NCR (National Capital Region), the Union Environment Minister has simultaneously made it clear that restrictions will not apply to the mining of “critical, strategic, and atomic minerals” listed under the First and Seventh Schedules of the Mining and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Act, 1957.

The technical committee’s report goes further, recording the Rajasthan government’s assertion that the Aravallis contain deep-seated minerals falling under these schedules. In effect, while public discussion is steered toward minor minerals, the legal framework deliberately keeps the door open for extraction that can be justified as strategically or economically important.

The report itself acknowledges that beneath the surface, the Aravalli Range holds substantial mineral wealth, including marble, granite, mica, and other minerals that have historically fuelled construction and extraction across the region. This acknowledgement is wrapped in familiar language about balancing development and conservation. Yet, the exemptions embedded in the framework tell a more revealing story.

By recommending that mining restrictions “need not apply” to critical, strategic, and atomic minerals on grounds of defence and national security, the policy regime creates a hierarchy of extraction, where ecological protection is no longer a principle but a conditional privilege.

Environmentalists have, therefore, warned that the redefinition functions less as a safeguard than as an open-ended licence. As forest analyst Chetan Agarwal has pointed out, the combined effect of the new definition and the statutory exemptions is that mining for critical minerals would be permissible both in areas above 100 metres that are legally recognised as Aravallis and in areas below 100 metres that are legally rendered non-Aravalli hills. Whether one adopts the Forest Survey of India’s slope-based criteria or the Ministry’s height-based definition, future mining is not ruled out. At best, the framework promises uniform scrutiny. It does not promise ecological restraint.

Seen this way, the redefinition is not about scientific precision. It is about regulatory reordering. It preserves flexibility for mining interests under the shifting banners of development, growth, and national security, while steadily shrinking the space of unconditional ecological protection. What is being stabilised is not conservation, but the State’s discretion to extract, leaving the ecological integrity of the Aravallis to be negotiated, diluted, and overridden as required.

Once hills and ridges fall outside the formal definition, they become administratively invisible as ecologically protected spaces and legally legible as extractable real estate. In this sense, the redefinition does not curb mining; it reorganises mining opportunities. It converts contested landscapes into contract-friendly terrain. The redefinition legalises vulnerability.

Critiques insist that the issue is not scientific disagreement but state-enabled extraction. The language of “uniform definitions” masks a deeper redistribution of ecological risk from corporations and contractors to landscapes and communities that lack political power.

Sonbhadra is another case in the point, it shows where this logic ultimately leads. Often described as the energy capital of North India, Sonbhadra is rich in coal and dotted with thermal power plants that supply electricity to distant cities and industrial hubs. It is also one of the starkest examples of how State greed, legitimised through development discourse, devastates nature and people alike.

Decades of coal mining, fly ash dumping, forest clearance, and thermal pollution have left Sonbhadra environmentally scarred and socially impoverished. Adivasi and forest-dependent communities have been repeatedly displaced, their land acquired in the name of national interest, their water poisoned, and their livelihoods eroded. Despite fuelling urban growth elsewhere, Sonbhadra itself remains marked by poverty, poor health indicators, and ecological ruin.

Sonbhadra is not an aberration. It is a preview. It demonstrates how resource-rich regions are turned into sacrifice zones, where nature is stripped, communities are marginalised, and the benefits of extraction flow outward. The same logic now looms over the Aravallis, albeit through quieter legal instruments rather than overt dispossession.

Natural Justice, Commons, and Question of Who Pays

What is strikingly absent from the redefinition of the Aravallis, and from extractive governance more broadly, is any serious engagement with the law of natural justice. At its most elementary level, natural justice rests on the principles of fairness and the right to be heard. Yet in the appropriation of natural resources and common-pool resources (CPRs), these principles are routinely violated. Decisions that reshape landscapes, livelihoods, and ecological futures are taken without involving and without a concern towards communities who live with their immediate consequences.

Read Also: Halt Wanton Degradation of Aravallis

Hills, forests, grazing lands, water bodies, and mineral-bearing tracts are not inert assets waiting to be monetised. For local communities, pastoralists in the Aravallis, adivasis in Sonbhadra, forest dwellers and small cultivators across extractive belts, they constitute shared ecological commons, governed by customary use, collective knowledge, and intergenerational dependence. When the State redraws ecological boundaries, dilutes protections, or facilitates mining through redefinition and reclassification, it does so by dispossessing those most dependent on these resources, often without meaningful consultation, consent, or remedy.

This is distributive injustice. The benefits of extraction, mining contracts, construction material, electricity, urban infrastructure, flow upwards and outwards to corporations, contractors, and distant cities. The costs, displacement, loss of livelihoods, groundwater depletion, toxic air and water, long-term health damage, are localised and borne by communities with the least political power. Those who profit from extraction are insulated from its harms; those who suffer its effects are excluded from decision-making. Such an asymmetry violates the moral core of natural justice: no group should be made to bear burdens from which others reap gains without accountability or participation.

Sonbhadra offers a grim illustration of where this logic leads. Coal and power extracted in the name of national development have left behind ecological ruin, chronic poverty, and dispossessed communities. The Aravallis now risk being drawn into the same trajectory, less dramatically, perhaps, but no less decisively, through a legal sleight that converts ecological commons into contract-ready terrain. What is at stake is not simply environmental damage, but the erosion of natural rights: the right of communities to land, water, livelihood, and a sustainable future.

Environmental degradation also violates an often-overlooked dimension of natural justice, the obligation to do no irreversible harm. When ecosystems are destroyed in ways that foreclose future options, the injury extends beyond the present generation. It robs communities of resilience, adaptability, and dignity, while accountability for such harm remains diffuse or absent. Growth achieved by externalising damage onto the poor and the peripheral cannot claim legitimacy, however technically legal it may appear.

Shirin Akhter is Associate Professor at Zakir Husain Delhi College, University of Delhi. The views are personal.

 

Equitywashing and Hidden Costs of Sustainability

Carter Dillard | 26 Dec 2025

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Systems that claim to protect the environment often benefit the powerful while leaving the most vulnerable behind, revealing how inequitable standards, birth positionality, and philanthropy shape climate, social, and human rights outcomes.

Sustainability has become a buzzword, but behind the rhetoric lie deep inequities. Systems that claim to protect the environment and future generations often benefit the powerful while leaving the most vulnerable behind. From corporate greenwashing to philanthropic initiatives that ignore structural injustices, these frameworks rarely account for the true costs of economic growth—particularly for children and communities facing systemic disadvantage.

These inequitable standards, known as equitywashing, shape environmental policy and philanthropy, harming the climate, democracy, and human rights. At the same time, the conditions into which children are born—referred to as birth positionality—determine their capacity to participate in society, influence policy, and survive environmental threats. Establishing a legitimacy line, defined as the minimum threshold of empowerment and resources a child must have to exercise meaningful freedom, is central to understanding how inequities persist. Genuine reforms that account for these factors are urgently needed to create a truly sustainable and just future for all generations.

How Philanthropy and Nonprofits Perpetuate Inequity

This problem extends beyond for-profit enterprises. Wealthy investors and donors often exploit flawed frameworks in both business and philanthropic models, fueling systemic harms such as factory farming and environmental degradation.

Some business models rely on standards that discount the lives of future children and nonhuman animals. Activists, including myself, have served at large U.S. nonprofits and witnessed dominant funders deliberately ignore how inequitable growth undermined, on a macro scale, the organizations’ claimed impacts, benefiting funders while exacting deadly costs on the most vulnerable.

Superficial interventions by philanthropists and public interest groups—often funded by the same wealthy investors exploiting the market’s failure to capture true costs—repeat these mistakes. Any value or impact claim today is likely out of context, ignoring that children born into vastly inequitable conditions fundamentally affect the veracity of such claims. If philanthropy has failed to prevent the climate crisis, the decline of democracy, and widespread inequity, it is because wealthy families assumed the right, via unsustainable growth, to benefit their children at deadly cost to others.

The Foundations of Birth-Based Power and Inequity

For decades, nonprofits backed by predominantly white philanthropic families relied on value assessments and impact reporting standards that ignored how growth gradually undermined claimed benefits relative to ecological thresholds. The result enriched some children, often funders’ offspring, while children of color absorbed the true costs.

This issue goes beyond greenwashing to a deeper problem: equitywashing. Equitywashing conceals illegitimate, inequitable, and birth-based power relations, defining “green” standards in ways that benefit some at deadly cost to others and drive the climate crisis. Stemming from the subversion of racial justice movements in the 20th century through policies that privatized family planning, this ideology shapes power rather than promoting equity or empowerment.

Wealthy families and governments executed a sleight of hand, assuming authority and entitlements instead of legitimizing them. They treated freedom from coercion as freedom from the state rather than the ability to consent to influence, implementing reproductive rights standards that enriched some children at deadly cost to others. This framework encouraged those with privileged birth positions to live in more other-determining than self-determining ways, eroding genuine freedom for all.

Equitywashing and the Limits of Green Metrics

Cosmetic or commercial diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice reforms—often promoted by philanthropists—rely on a false dichotomy between autonomy and equity. This approach ignores deeper systemic issues: By sidelining initiatives that prioritize empowerment, such as the autonomy-building value of Black birth equity, these reforms risk reinforcing the inequities they claim to address.

Even widely accepted legal or social standards can obscure the real consequences of inequitable births. Policies treating pregnancy termination as autonomy may overlook broader risks: A woman might still face life-threatening heat waves caused by climate change if she cannot afford air conditioning, lacks political influence, or cannot rely on community support. Under flawed “efficiency” standards, she may be treated as an economic input rather than a fully empowered human being. Freedom in this context is misvalued, as governments have historically based legitimacy on an unjust “birth lottery.” Focusing on downstream, siloed interventions without addressing foundational inequities perpetuates systemic disenfranchisement.

Global Pressure and Calls for Reparative Justice

Global pressure for reparative justice is intensifying, particularly from African-led coalitions facing severe consequences of inequitable development. These groups advocate family-based climate reparations to guarantee the right to be born into empowering conditions and call for an end to unfair competition from U.S. nonprofits that ignore equitywashing standards.

Many large US environmental organisations have raised millions to protect specific regions while knowingly allowing birth inequities to benefit funders. They have obscured funder enrichment while celebrating animal-protection victories, even as growth-based policies undermined those achievements. Without addressing fraudulent equity and impact standards, these organisations risk repeating harmful patterns.

One solution is to establish a preemptive right to equity reparations directed toward collective family-planning systems, ensuring that new generations are empowered and self-determining. Governments must base authority on measurable political equity—the degree to which constituents are genuinely empowered—or equal offsets relative to zero. Funding delayed parenting ensures no child is born below a minimum threshold of self-determination, creating a legitimate line of opportunity.

What does this look like in terms of concrete actions one can take? Citizens can challenge false and misleading claims by filing complaints with state attorneys general. Furthermore, citizens should seek a preemptive injunction from the states to block the use of the equity fraud standard driving equitywashed claims.

Reframing Freedom and Responsibility

Reforming systemic inequities requires rigorous fact- and value-checking, alongside securing admissions of truth and commitments to change. This process fosters obligations that allow people to become genuinely self-determining—something legal texts or academic frameworks alone cannot achieve.

Laws are followed effectively only when people can act within a system that supports autonomy. Ignoring how birth conditions enhance or limit self-determination undermines true empowerment. Ultimately, reforms must create unified obligations that strengthen collective freedom and responsibility rather than relying on fragmented or purely intersectional approaches.

Truth and reconciliation frameworks provide a way to hold accountable those who benefited from inequitable or fraudulent standards. By establishing shared values and obligations, society can anticipate and prevent further harm caused by systemic inequities.

Redefining sustainability requires placing freedom and responsibility in context, recognising that genuine sustainability depends not only on environmental or economic metrics but also on the equitable empowerment of all people, particularly the most vulnerable. This approach shifts the focus from superficial measures and short-term gains to long-term, just, and universally beneficial outcomes.

Carter Dillard is the policy adviser for the Fair Start Movement.

This article was produced by Earth • Food • Life, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

Courtesy: Independent Media Institute

Alliance of Sahel States Launches Unified Military Force

Nicholas Mwangi | 26 Dec 2025

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A historic turning point in Sahelian sovereignty, as Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger bolstered their regional security through a unified military force and in the same week held its second AES summit.

Leaders of the AES, Burkina Faso’s Ibrahim Traoré, Mali’s Assimi Goïta, and Niger’s Abdourahamane Tchiani at the AES Heads of State Summit in Bamako, Mali. Photo: Presidence Mali / Facebook

The Alliance of Sahel States (AES) has taken a decisive step toward regional self defense after officially launching a joint military force aimed at combating Islamist insurgency and terrorism across the Sahel. The force was inaugurated on December 20, 2025, during a ceremony held at an air base in Bamako, Mali’s capital.

The ceremony was presided over by Mali’s Transitional President, Head of State, Supreme Chief of the Armed Forces, and outgoing President of the AES, Army General Assimi Goïta. The event was the formal handover of the Unified Force of the AES banner, marking the operationalization of a long-declared commitment by Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger to jointly secure their territories’ sovereignty.

The newly established force, known as the FU AES, brings together approximately 5,000 troops drawn from the three member states. It is designed to integrate air power, intelligence sharing, and coordinated ground operations to confront armed groups that have destabilized large parts of the Sahel for over a decade.

Addressing the gathering, Malian General Aliou Boï Diarra delivered a deeply symbolic and emotional speech, underscoring the historical and moral significance of the banner. He described the banner as far more than a ceremonial object.

“The standard that you are presenting to the unified AES force represents a memory, a will, an irreversible commitment. It profoundly affirms a certainty now deeply engraved in the hearts of our beloved peoples. This is indeed a truly historic and momentous act,” General Diarra said.

Diarra declared that the banner embodied sacrifice and struggle rather than decoration: “This sacred standard is not merely a decorative symbol. It is the profound and enduring result of precious blood bravely shed, immense courage valiantly embraced, and fundamental truth profoundly rediscovered.”

Paying tribute to the fallen, he added:

“To our cherished martyrs, to all innocent civilians, and to the brave soldiers who have fallen in battle, I humbly pay a solemn and heartfelt tribute beneath the eternal snow. They did not die in vain.”

Mali’s leader, General Goïta, in his own address, described the launch as a historic turning point for the Sahel. He began by saluting the defense leadership and troops of the region.

“On this significant occasion, I would like to extend my sincere congratulations and profoundly salute the exceptional courage, unwavering professionalism, steadfast commitment, and resolute determination of the ministers of defense, the chiefs of general staff, and especially all the brave defense and security forces of the AES area for the remarkable achievements they have made in their relentless fight against armed terrorist groups,” he said.

The AES president recalled that since the Niamey Mutual Initiative (NMI) declaration of July 6, 2024, joint military operations have already been underway, noting that they resulted in the neutralization of several terrorist leaders and the destruction of multiple insurgent sanctuaries.

According to Goïta, “All these positive results were achieved thanks to meticulous planning, timely and effective intelligence sharing, and above all the comprehensive pooling of our collective efforts and resources.”

He further announced key institutional steps consolidating the unified force, including the appointment of a new commander, the establishment of a central command post in the strategic city of Niamey, and the assignment of specialized battalions fully dedicated to AES operations. He stressed that the task ahead would require adaptability to the evolving tactics of armed groups.

“It is now critically important for the new commander not only to anticipate the increasingly complex operating methods of terrorist groups, but above all to resolutely continue this crucial fight to secure the entire Sahel region and ensure lasting peace and stability.”

General Goïta added that the conflict confronting the Sahel is multidimensional, “This war is not only military. It is also political, economic, and informational.”

He identified what he described as three major threats facing Sahelian states: armed terrorist violence, economic terrorism, and media terrorism. In response, he noted that the confederation has adopted a comprehensive strategy that goes beyond battlefield operations.

“We have taken measures to counter these threats not only by establishing this unified force, but also by creating AES Television, AES Radio, and AES print media,” he said, framing these platforms as tools to counter disinformation and psychological warfare.

The military launch follows a series of symbolic and political moves that underline the bloc’s growing autonomy. Earlier in the year, the AES unveiled a new flag, representing the confederation’s shared identity and its intention to redefine political, economic, and security cooperation outside the shadow of French imperialism and Western neoliberal frameworks. Leaders of the bloc have repeatedly criticized past military partnerships with France and other Western powers, arguing that foreign interventions failed to bring peace while undermining national sovereignty.

The AES summit

Mali hosted a summit of the Alliance of Sahel States in the same week, which concluded on Tuesday, December 23. During the summit, Burkina Faso’s leader, Captain Ibrahim Traoré, was appointed as the new head of the Alliance of Sahel States. Following the meeting, the Alliance announced that the summit would be followed by a large-scale military operation.

Earlier this year, the three countries also introduced a joint AES passport, a major step toward deeper integration. This move came after Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger formally withdrew from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), an organization they now openly describe as hostile.

The launch of the unified force also takes place amid rising regional tensions. Nigeria and Côte d’Ivoire, both influential ECOWAS members, have been criticized by AES leaders and their supporters for what they see as counter revolutionary postures. In official and popular discourse within the Sahel, these countries are increasingly portrayed as attempting to contain or reverse the radical political shifts unfolding in Bamako, Ouagadougou, and Niamey.

What is clear is that Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger are charting a new path, one that is redefining power, alliances, and resistance in the heart of West Africa.

Courtesy: Peoples Dispatch

 

India 2025: What Free Speech Collective Report Reveals About a Year of Silencing

Tanya Arora | 26 Dec 2025

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Based on data documenting 14,875 violations, the Free Speech Collective’s latest report traces how killings, arrests, mass censorship, corporate pressure and regulatory overreach combined to shrink India’s public sphere in 2025.

Image: Human Rights Watch

According to the report Free Speech in India 2025: Behold the Hidden Hand, released by the Free Speech Collective (FSC) in December 2025, the past year marked one of the most severe erosions of free expression in India in recent history. Drawing on granular, nationwide data collected through its Free Speech Tracker, the report documents 14,875 instances of free speech violations in 2025 alone—ranging from killings and arrests to mass censorship, legal intimidation, and institutionalised regulation of speech. The report argues that these figures do not represent isolated excesses but point to a systematic, multi-layered assault on the constitutional right to free expression.

The report identifies the reported disappearance and killing of journalist Mukesh Chandrakar in Bastar in early January as emblematic of the dangers faced by those who speak truth to power. Chandrakar had reported on poor-quality road construction in the region shortly before he went missing; his body was later found in a septic tank. The FSC notes that this incident set the tone for a year in which nine people were killed for exercising their right to free speech, including eight journalists and one social media influencer. It underscores that violence against journalists—particularly those working in rural and semi-urban districts—remains one of the most visible and brutal forms of silencing.

Journalists as primary targets

The FSC report records 40 attacks on free speech actors in 2025, of which 33 targeted journalists. It notes that reporters covering local corruption, illegal mining, liquor mafias, and administrative failures were especially vulnerable. In several cases, the police initially attempted to attribute killings or deaths to personal disputes, accidents, or intoxication, even when the journalists had recently published sensitive stories. The report highlights the case of Uttarakhand-based YouTuber Rajeev Pratap, whose body was recovered from the Bhagirathi, river days after he aired a video exposing liquor consumption inside a local hospital. Despite colleagues raising serious doubts, police claimed he had driven into the river while drunk.

The FSC further draws attention to the continued incarceration of journalists Irfan Mehraj and Rupesh Kumar under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967, noting that their prolonged detention without trial exemplifies the use of counter-terror laws to suppress journalism. Threats and harassment accompanied physical violence: at least 14 of 19 harassment incidents and 12 of 17 recorded threats were directed at journalists engaged in professional work. The report cites, as illustrative, a threat by TDP MLA Gummanur Jayaram to force journalists “to sleep on railway tracks” if they published allegedly false information about him.

The return of sedition and criminal lawfare

One of the most troubling findings of the report is the resurgence of sedition prosecutions, despite repeated assurances that colonial-era speech offences had been rendered obsolete under the new criminal codes. The FSC documents multiple sedition cases filed in 2025 against satirists, journalists, and political commentators for online posts questioning state action.

The report details how satirists Neha Singh Rathore, Madri Kakoti (Dr Medusa), and Shamita Yadav (Ranting Gola) were charged with sedition for social media commentary following the Pahalgam attack. It flags the Allahabad High Court’s rejection of Rathore’s anticipatory bail as a significant departure from earlier judicial reluctance to allow sedition prosecutions for speech. The FSC also records the filing of sedition FIRs by Assam police against the leadership and columnists of The Wire, including founding editor Siddharth Varadarajan and consulting editor Karan Thapar, as well as against journalist Abhisar Sarma for a YouTube programme that relied on publicly available judicial observations.

According to the report, these cases exemplify “lawfare”—the strategic use of criminal law not necessarily to secure convictions, but to intimidate, exhaust, and silence critical voices through prolonged legal processes.

Mass censorship and platform control

The largest category of violations documented by the FSC in 2025 relates to censorship and internet control, with 11,385 instances recorded. The report highlights mass government takedown requests to social media platforms, particularly X (formerly Twitter). In May and July 2025 alone, over 10,000 accounts were withheld in India. Citing X’s submissions before the Karnataka High Court, the report notes that the platform received 29,118 takedown requests from the Indian government between January and June 2025 and complied with the overwhelming majority of them.

The FSC identifies the Sahyog portal as a key institutional mechanism enabling decentralised censorship by allowing state agencies, district officials, and local police to issue takedown notices directly to platforms. Following the Pahalgam attack, numerous accounts belonging to journalists, news organisations, and international media outlets—including The Wire, Maktoob Media, Reuters, and many senior journalists—were withheld without public disclosure of reasons. The report notes that the Karnataka High Court’s decision upholding the Sahyog portal effectively legitimised large-scale, opaque censorship of online speech.

The ‘Hidden Hand’: Self-censorship and corporate influence

Beyond formal orders, the FSC report devotes significant attention to what it terms the “hidden hand” of censorship: informal pressures, verbal directives, and institutional intimidation that rarely leave a documentary trail. The report cites instances of journalists receiving “friendly calls,” media houses quietly dropping stories, and investigative platforms being financially crippled through regulatory action, such as the revocation of The Reporter’s Collective’s tax-exempt status.

Corporate power, the report notes, increasingly intersected with state censorship. It documents the September 2025 ex-parte injunction obtained by Adani Enterprises leading to the takedown of over 200 pieces of online content critical of the company, as well as sustained attempts to suppress reporting on the Vantara wildlife project linked to Reliance Industries. Even where courts later set aside gag orders, the report observes that the chilling effect on media coverage persisted.

Academia, cinema, and the right to think

The FSC records at least 16 serious instances of censorship in academia, including the cancellation of conferences, denial of permissions, deportation of visiting scholars, and the revocation of OCI status of academics critical of the government. In Kashmir, the report notes, authorities banned 25 books on the region’s history and politics and raided bookstores.

In cinema, the report documents excessive cuts, prolonged certification delays, and outright denial of certification to films addressing caste violence, state abuse, or social injustice. It notes that even internationally acclaimed films and centenary classics were barred from screening, underscoring how certification had become a tool of prior restraint rather than classification.

An uneven judicial response

While acknowledging some notable judicial interventions in favour of free speech, the FSC concludes that the judiciary’s overall response in 2025 was inconsistent. The report contrasts strong Supreme Court observations protecting poetry, satire, and art with orders that imposed gag conditions, endorsed expansive censorship mechanisms, or demanded apologies from artists. This inconsistency, the report argues, has failed to provide a stable constitutional shield for free expression.

A shrinking democratic space

In its concluding assessment, the Free Speech Collective warns that the cumulative impact of violence, lawfare, mass censorship, corporate pressure, and regulatory overreach has fundamentally altered the conditions under which speech is exercised in India. The report cautions that free expression has not been extinguished outright, but increasingly conditioned, surveilled, and constrained, creating a climate in which self-censorship becomes a rational act of survival.

As the report starkly concludes, the “hidden hand” shaping India’s speech landscape in 2025 is no longer subtle—it has become structural.

The complete report may be read here.

Courtesy: Sabrang India