The Lady Chatterley Prosecution: Article Update

A draft paper is now up on SSRN here, retelling the story of the persecution and prosecution of the unexpurgated edition of Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H. Lawrence. It is more legal history than anything else, looking at the archives to share a ringside view of how the levers of state power operated over a few years, culminating in the decision of the Supreme Court in 1964. 

The abstract is below:

Come August 2024, it will be sixty years since the Indian Supreme Court delivered its verdict upholding the prosecution and conviction of the proprietors of one Happy Book Stall of what is today Mumbai under the offence of Obscenity punishable under Section 292 of the Indian Penal Code, 1860. Their crime? Stocking and selling unexpurgated editions of Lady Chatterley’s Lover [‘Chatterley’] by D.H. Lawrence to the unsuspecting public of the city.

The Supreme Court’s decision in Ranjit D. Udeshi v. State of Maharashtra is only the conclusion in what is a fascinating tale of how Chatterley was treated by the Indian government and courts. A tale which involves the highest echelons of power, bogey purchases by police officers in disguise, and three lengthy judicial verdicts that are united not in their reasoning but only in their conclusion that the unexpurgated edition of Chatterley was obscene.

You may, at this point, be thinking: “Fine, but why bother with a sixty-year-old case?” and would be justified in entertaining these doubts. Once you look at what is written about this sixty-year-old case in India, though, those doubts should dissipate. Scholarship has, thus far, focused solely upon the legal lifting done in the Supreme Court’s judgment, criticising the Court for blessing a test that unduly restricted freedom of speech and expression. Outside of this scholarship, precious little has been written about the persecution and prosecution of Chatterley in India, and this is a gap which I try to address. Looking at government files, newspaper reports, and the verdict of the court of first instance besides appellate court judgments, the paper offers new perspectives on how the state machinery operated to censor Chatterley in India.

 Comments welcome!