ABHINAV CHANDRACHUD is an advocate who practises at the Bombay High
Court. He graduated from the LLM programme at Harvard Law School where he was a Dana
Scholar, and from the JSM and JSD programmes at Stanford Law School where he was a Franklin
Family Scholar. He has worked as an associate attorney at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, a global
law firm, and as a paralegal at AZB & Partners, a leading law firm in India. He is the author of
An Independent, Colonial Judiciary (2015) and The Informal Constitution (2014).
Exploring the legal and political history of India, from the British period to the present,
Republic of Rhetoric examines the right to free speech and it argues that the enactment of the Constitution in 1950 did not make a significant difference to the freedom of expression in India. Abhinav Chandrachud suggests that colonial-era restrictions on free speech, like sedition, obscenity, contempt of court, defamation and hate speech, were not merely retained but also strengthened in independent India. Authoritative and compelling, this book offers lucid and cogent arguments that have not been substantially advanced before by any of the leading thinkers on the right of free speech in India.
