Law of press censor in India

Civil Liberties, ideal or reality?

"Give me liberty to know, to utter and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties. Whoever knew Truth put to the worse, in a free and open encounter".

Thus nobly thundered John Milton, the immortal poet of England. Milton's Areopagatica (1644) was primarily directed against the power of the licensor. Milton condemned licensing as a device for repressing free man's thought.

Alas! Milton's proclaimed tolerance did not extend to what he hated, "Popery and open superstition", which, in his opinion, "should be extirpat". In later years he performed the role of one of Cromwell's official censors. Why?

The answer lies in the sad fact that freedom of speech has always been more of an ideal than a reality. There is in most men an impulse to persecute whatever is felt to be different or critical. Mankind has not evolved sufficiently to permit fellow citizens to freely express ideas that are critical and seem obnoxious. History teaches us that those who proudly flutter the banner of liberalism often denounce others' thoughts as dangerous. The virus of intoler ance lies dormant in all of us and in moments of crisis and excite ment it parades its ugly head. We are all of us a mixture of good and bad impulses and it is always the bad impulse that somehow prevails in an excited crowd. The problem is not really legal or political but anthropological and, if you do not ridicule the doctrine of Original Sin, theological.