ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates the construction of the blasphemy provisions of the Indian Criminal Code of 1860 and its subsequent revisions. This is shown to have a substantial afterlife as a touchstone of potential multicultural significance in refereeing between the competing claims of different religious groups. As such, it has regularly been invoked as a possible solution to issues facing countries seeking to move beyond protection for a state religion to a wider recognition of the rights of all the religious. The Code’s provisions also seemed attractive because they focussed upon apparently equalising conceptions of public order, but the politics surrounding this often served to inhibit the wholesale adoption of its provisions.
