Came here to say exactly this. There are two parts to this as I see it with some bit of overlap. 1. A hard core group (could be religious, person centric (e.g

Came here to say exactly this. There are two parts to this as I see it with some bit of overlap. 1. A hard core group (could be religious, person centric (e.g., Mahatma Gandhi)) that act as custodians of "sentiments" of larger population. They act with various degrees of violence if they believe that the sentiments have been hurt [1], [2]. The police force itself generally sides with the mob and they cite oft repeated phrase of "natural reaction by the crowd" as a reason for avoiding taking action. 2. Freedom of expression that's curtailed by law and codified in law books. For me #2 above is far more serious issue. Various courts routinely invoke this law, which is amazingly ill-defined to start with, to suppress any kind of dissent. I can't cite hard data here but in my life time I can clearly see an uptrend in such cases. There's also a harsher (some say draconian) law around sedition. Even if you are a mere sympathizer with a banned group then you will be treated as an enemy of the state; there's no soft middle ground here and you are treated as a militant [3]. Shiny GDP and development notwithstanding India is fast moving towards dictatorship which is really unfortunate as right to dissent is the core of a democratic society. [1]: http://indianexpress.com/article/india/politics/muslim-techie-beaten-to-death-in-pune-7-men-of-hindu-outfit-held/ http://indianexpress.com/article/india/politics/muslim-techi... [2]: http://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/kerala-police-may-book-arundhati-roy-for-comments-against-gandhi/article1-1247479.aspx http://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/kerala-police-may-b... [3]: http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-others/du-professor-g-n-saibaba-is-arrested-for-naxal-links/ http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-others/du-profe...