A secular republic’s sacrilege problem

In April 2026, the Governor of Punjab approved the Jaagat Jot Sri Guru Granth Sahib Satkar (Amendment) Act, a law that criminalizes desecration of the Guru Granth Sahib with penalties up to and including life imprisonment. This legislation came in the wake of a decade-long campaign following desecration incidents at Bargari, Burj Jawahar Singh Wala, and Behbal Kalan, as well as police firing that killed two protesters in 2015.

On the surface, the law appears to be a typical response to community tensions; however, it is actually one of India's strictest working sacrilege laws, which punishes the physical desecration of a sacred text with severe penalties, conflicting with the nation's declared secular principles. The Constitution reserves secularism as part of its "basic structure," making this type of law seem out of place.

Punjab's law is merely the most visible recent illustration of a broader pattern: a collection of provisions, some inherited from colonial times and others recent, that treat criticism of religious beliefs and practices as a police matter rather than a matter for open discussion. Blasphemy, as initially defined by English ecclesiastical law, refers to contemptuous or irreverent speech, writing, or imagery about deities, prophets, scriptures, or belief systems.

Sacrilege, on the other hand, involves the physical desecration or defilement of something considered sacred, such as a place of worship, ritual, or object. Historically, sacrilege has been seen as a conduct-based issue akin to trespass or vandalism, rather than an expressive issue. However, Indian law has drawn a distinction between the two, with Section 298 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita treating sacrilege as a conduct-based offense, while Section 299 addresses deliberate and malicious insults to religious beliefs through words, signs, or visible representations, including electronic means, which could be considered the general prohibition on blasphemy.