Index discusses the anti-Muslim films coming out of Bollywood
Indian cinema: propaganda at the pictures
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CATEGORY: Magazine
I can imagine going anywhere: Ai Weiwei, an artist without a country
Index talks to the acclaimed Chinese artist about his new book on censorship
From police to Pussy Riot
A former member of the protest band explains how she left a career in St Petersburg’s police force to become a political dissident
Poet Mohamed Tadjadit has become the voice of Algeria’s discontented youth
The voice of the Hirak movement faces the death penalty for highlighting the challenges facing the country’s youth through his words
Orbán’s anti-culture club
As Europe’s top court strikes down Hungary’s anti-LGBTQ+ laws, Index looks at how the state has been trying to silence writers and artists
The monster unleashed: How Hungary’s illiberal vision is seducing the western world
Volume 55.01 Spring 2026
Contents – The monster unleashed: How Hungary’s illiberal vision is seducing the western world
Contents
Hungary: The signs that heralded Péter Magyar’s landslide
A journalist reveals the indications that things were changing after 16 years of rule by Viktor Orbán
Hungary leads the far-right charge on free speech
Index looks at the Viktor Orbán-funded institute bringing together far-right leaders across Europe
Gen Z is revolting: Why the world’s youth will not be silenced
Volume 54.04 Winter 2025
A quarterly journal set up in 1972, Index on Censorship magazine has published oppressed writers and refused to be silenced across hundreds of issues.
The brainchild of the poet Stephen Spender, and translator Michael Scammell, the magazine’s very first issue included a never-before-published poem, written while serving a sentence in a labour camp, by the Soviet dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who went on to win a Nobel prize later that year.
The magazine continued to be a thorn in the side of Soviet censors, but its scope was far wider. From the beginning, Index declared its mission to stand up for free expression as a fundamental human right for people everywhere – it was particularly vocal in its coverage of the oppressive military regimes of southern Europe and Latin America but was also clear that freedom of expression was not only a problem in faraway dictatorships. The winter 1979 issue, for example, reported on a controversy in the United States in which the Public Broadcasting Service had heavily edited a documentary about racism in Britain and then gone to court attempting to prevent screenings of the original version. Learn more.