Right to Integrity in Indian Courts: A Case for an Objective Standard
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Right to Integrity in Indian Courts: A Case for an Objective Standard
By Adyasha Samal
The recent theatrical rerelease of the popular Hindi movie Raanjhana with an altered ending has raised questions regarding the moral rights implications of revisions to existing works. In a previous post, Tejaswini discusses this in the context of lack of authorial rights available to film directors. This post normatively examines the standard best suited to adjudicate integrity right harms.
Integrity right lies at the heart of Hegelian philosophy, positing the work as an external manifestation of the author’s personhood. Integrity right violations, as defined in Section 57(b) of the Copyright Act, 1957, would involve ‘any distortion, mutilation, modification or other act in relation to a work’ that is ‘prejudicial to the honour or reputation’ of an author. To assess this prejudice, courts around the world apply one of the following:
- an objective standard, where prejudice is determined from a reasonable person’s point-of-view, taking into consideration the context and various factors surrounding the offending act; or
- a subjective standard, where the author’s own perception of harm or prejudice takes priority.
It must be noted that the reasonable person test cannot be purely ‘objective’ or neutral as it is bound to reflect prevailing social values. The distinction here is between an external and context-sensitive evaluation and one based solely on the author’s individual feelings.
The subjective standard is premised on the belief that no one understands the meaning of the work better than the author whose spiritual child it is. It thus reflects a more direct application of Hegelian philosophy into the law. Some countries loosely circumscribe subjective assertions with a reasonableness test, thus inserting a filter of objective scrutiny. Australia and Canada are illustrative in this regard, while the UK follows a much stricter adherence to objectivity. India’s protection of integrity right is broad; as seen from the reading-in of ‘destruction’ into the statutory provision and recognition of cultural heritage arguments in Amarnath Sehgal. However, as Karishma and Varsha explain, Indian courts have not established a preferred standard. This post argues that an objective standard is more suitable because it balances justice to the author with the broader goal of promoting creative freedom.
Integrity right harms can be broadly categorised into three types: (1) acts done to original copies of works like artworks, manuscripts, compositions; (2) revising or altering published and replicable copies; and (3) dislocation of works into new contexts. Arguably, a major reason the Indian approach is considered subjective is that it recognises destruction within the scope of the integrity right, which is neither provided in the statute itself, nor recognised in objective-leaning jurisdictions like the UK and Germany. While this may expand protection for authors in cases involving original copies, subjectivity proves problematic for revisions and dislocations. By privileging the author’s perception as the dominant lens, the subjective standard risks undermining the realities of plural interpretations as well as copyright law’s central goal of promoting creativity.
The Pitfalls of Subjectivity
When a work or a part of it is revised or dislocated, it often becomes a new creative expression – even if it does not itself meet copyright’s threshold of protection. Stifling this new expression based on authors’ subjective grounds may limit the work’s transformative potential, making it static and cut-off from the free-flow of artistic, sociocultural and political discourse.
Madhavi Sunder has argued (pg 39) that copyright’s goal of promoting creativity must be interpreted to include creativity achieved by working within existing culture, i.e., using existing works as one’s raw material. This approach can empower subaltern voices to recode and rework popular cultural material to tell their own stories. While these uses have clear social benefits, even uses that do not obviously advance social causes should not be stifled as that can have a chilling effect on free expression.
Copyright law protects original expressions without concerning itself with the literary or artistic merit of the expressions. While Indian copyright law does not explicitly embed aesthetic neutrality, the Supreme Court in Eastern Book Company clarified that originality requires only a “modicum of creativity,” a standard met even in the preparation of headnotes. This doctrine of aesthetic neutrality enjoys strong judicial support in the US, where courts have refused to assess the merit of parodic uses, or to withhold protection for posters not considered ‘high art’. The underlying principle is that law courts are not the appropriate forum for artistic value judgment.
A subjective enforcement of integrity right however, does involve aesthetic judgments. It risks amplifying views and promoting work by the more influential authors of the day. By contrast, an objective judicial scrutiny will allow the court to focus on whether a reasonable observer would see the offending act as prejudicial to the author’s honour or reputation. This is arguably what the court did in Mannu Bhandari, clarifying that it is not it’s job “to stand sentinel to public morals,” before proceeding to evaluate how the public would perceive the modifications. A reasonableness test does not confine art to a limiting, socially-determined standard (which would be akin to censorship). Instead, it offers a reference point for ascertaining when uses cross into prejudice, without giving the author exclusive interpretive control.
Across creative industries, it is common for smaller or less established authors to transfer their economic rights to publishers or film producers, leaving moral rights as their only safeguard. This protection is not compromised by an objective standard: a court applying the reasonable person test can still find prejudice where a powerful organisation mutilates or misuses a work in ways that harm the author’s honour or reputation. The need to protect the author’s reputation against a multi-crore industry was acknowledged in Mannu Bhandari (para 17). At the same time, objectivity prevents established or commercially dominant authors or their estates from weaponising moral rights to suppress reinterpretation, parody, or criticism. A famous example of this is the case of Stephen Joyce, grandson of James Joyce, who used copyright and moral rights to veto the sharing of Joyce’s work so extensively that the Irish government had to enact a special law to permit certain uses. The objective approach ensures that integrity rights protect vulnerable creators, without being misused by dominant voices.
[A point to note is that the language in Section 57 is not mirrored in Section 38B, which captures performers’ moral rights. The latter concerns the performer’s personal image or voice and excludes prejudice to honour, hinting towards closer overlaps with the tort of defamation and personality rights.]
As Tejaswini’s post highlights, there is no such thing as the ‘true’ meaning of a creative work. Nathaniel Noda rightly states that “an author implicitly cedes certain interpretive rights to the general public when he or she introduces a work into the stream of public discourse.” While courts acknowledge a special author-work relationship, socially, meanings evolve beyond authorial intent and across regions, cultures, and social barriers of gender, race, class, etc. Works are often retold to highlight underexplored perspectives. Widely believed misinterpretations of popular stories have exponentially surpassed original authorial intent: Shakespeare’s satire, Romeo and Juliet, hailed as the greatest love story of all time; Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights, a story of obsession and abuse, mischaracterised as a tale of star-crossed lovers.
How the Objective Standard Fares Better
As highlighted earlier, the inclusion of destruction is a major appeal of the subjective standard in India. However, it is arguable that the objective standard is not inherently incompatible with destruction.
In Raj Rewal, the Delhi High Court clarified that ‘reputation’ was professional while ‘honour’ referred to the author’s integrity as a human being. Unlike the UK, where only professional reputation is relevant, this reading expands the scope of integrity right. Drawing on anthropological studies, Cheng-Davies suggests that prejudice to honour occurs where an act is insulting to an author’s ‘right to respect or individual worth’. The analysis would focus on whether a reasonable person would perceive the act as insulting.
As authors are often deeply attached to their works, destruction of their original, non-replicable works could indeed be objectively disrespectful. This is compatible with the Sehgal court’s opinion. On the other hand, revision and dislocation of mass-produced works usually shift focus onto the new context or message, rather than target the author herself. Under an objective test, such uses would only be unlawful when they are clearly disrespectful or perverse enough to harm the author’s professional reputation.
Interestingly, the term honour is hardly found elsewhere in Indian legislation (while reputation is the central focus of defamation law), with one case being in the Prevention of Insults to National Honour Act. This statute specifically excludes comments expressing disapprobation or criticism of the Constitution, the National Flag, or any Government measures – indicating a construction that does not discourage critique.
An objective framework also accommodates parody and satire. Revision and dislocation form the basis for creative genres like parody, appropriation art, caricature, etc which often involve altering a work in small but significant ways to convey a new message. Artistic reinterpretative freedom is the backbone of creative progress. Although Indian courts have not yet decided a major parody case under Section 57, an objective approach would be more compatible with such uses and prevent moral rights from being weaponised by oversensitive authors to gatekeep culture.
In India, songs have often been used in political campaigns/commentary without authorisation. These are cases of revision or dislocation (discussed by Rishabh). From an objective standpoint, only those instances would be actionable which reasonably prejudice the author’s deeply-held values as an individual (honour) or where the new context is at conflict with values espoused by the author’s body of work (reputation). Mere political recontextualization, even if controversial, should ordinarily fall within the realm of free expression. Authors may still challenge harmful associations similar to the racist stereotypes in posters in the case of Deckmyn v. Vandersteen (CJEU) (also see Nikhil’s post), a simple switching of political sides might not be enough. Arts and literature are tools for interpreting socio-political realities, and reusing them to express new messages is part of cultural dialogue.
An objective standard may not be perfect, as focusing on the ‘reasonable person’s’ view risks aligning with majoritarian views. However, because it is more sensitive to context and constitutionally protected free speech, it offers a better chance of safeguarding authors’ honour and reputation while enabling works to be reinterpreted, parodied, or recontextualised so as to fuel creative progress. By contrast, a subjective approach risks silencing new voices and empowering established ones to monopolise meaning. These tensions grow exponentially more significant when viewed in the context of AI-driven reuses, as in the case of Raanjhanaa, which increasingly generate new cultural expressions and are capable of being blocked by powerful authors. An objective approach would enable courts to distinguish harmful reuses from creative reworkings, preventing moral rights from stifling creativity.