NOT FOR COMMERCIAL USE 162 Book Reviews Rina Ramdev, Sandhya Devesan Nambiar and Debaditya Bhattacharya (Eds), Sentiment, Politics, Censorship: The State of Hurt, New Delhi, SAGE Publications, 2015, 324 pp., `895, ISBN-10: 9351503046/ ISBN-13: 978- 9351503040. DOI: 10.1177/0049085716683127 This book addresses a long felt need for theorising and compiling the recent debates that have taken place in India on the question of freedom of expression. The debate, in part, has been both stirred and rendered lively, by the emergence of the Internet as a significant medium of self-publishing and citizen journalism. The volume includes discussions on the issues of hate speech, hurt sentiments and censorship from the points of view of feminist scholarship, dalit experiences, ‘Muslim hurt’, and also from the experience of activism and administrative pro- scription in Delhi University. Since it brings together contributions from not only different normative viewpoints, but also from different professional vantage points, the book seems to the reader a round table discussion on free speech. A gaping lacuna in the book is its failure to specifically discuss the Information Technology Act and censorship, which has been an area of contention in recent times. Experts who could have produced systematic commentaries on this subject have, in this volume, focused on slightly different, though related, topics. For example, Lawrence Liang’s paper, ‘The Erotics of Law, Scandal, and Technology’ (pp. 224–235), has got little to do with hurt or censorship itself, but it helps us to make sense of the uncanny acceptance of ‘political porn’—the MMS scandals involving top politicians—in the public domain. Although the paper is worthy in its own right and is a delightful read, it does seem out of tune with the ongoing conversations in the book. Discussions on Internet intermediary liability are completely missing, even though these have significant implications for the exercise of free speech, and even though various chapters refer to Internet ‘takedowns’ repeatedly. One such chapter is ‘The Reascription of Hurt: When Abu Gharaib Came to Kashmir’ (pp. 102–108) by Akhil Katyal, which brilliantly establishes the arbitrariness and structural deformities of the concept of ‘hurt’, basing its analysis on the marginal interfaces of nudity and Kashmir—both of which mark the ‘no-go’ zones of politics in India. The biopolitical nature of hurt claims, conceptually pointed out by various other essays in this book, comes out with remarkable clarity in this particular essay. However, after all this discussion on Internet takedowns, the editors have not deemed it important to present a structural critique of ownership patterns of intermediary websites and flawed legislations that make such unlawful takedowns possible. Similarly missing is any systematic attempt to theorise the censoring effect of copyright laws. Various essays in the book lack in terms of taking normative positions (Shohini Ghosh’s being a notable exception). Maybe, a second edition of the book could do with paying more attention to this part, so that we can think of a way forward for a progressive politics that protects speech and also opposes politics of hatred. The editors deserve applause for taking bold stances and for presenting a holistic introduction titled ‘Sentimental Sovereignties’—a concept that outlines the crux