Includes bibliographical references (pages 265-280) and indexes.

Content:
Introduction;
Guarding the State, protecting the public: censorship policies and practices in the 1930s;
Protests and publicity: banning non-Indian authors;
Political or military? Censorship in India during the Second World War;
The censored turn censors: freedom and free speech.

"Censorship has been a universal phenomenon through history. However, its rationale and implementation has varied, and public reaction to it has differed across societies and times. This book recovers, narrates, and interrogates the history of censorship of publications in India over three crucial decades - encompassing the Gandhian anti-colonial movement, the Second World War, Partition, and the early years of independent India. In doing so, it examines state policy and practice, and also its subversion, in a tumultuous period of transition from colonial to self-rule in India"-- Provided by publisher.