The Press Act of 1908 was legislation promulgated in British India imposing strict censorship on all kinds of publications.
These were deemed to influence a surge in nationalist violence and revolutionary terrorism against interests and officials of the Raj in India, particularly in Maharashtra and in Bengal.
Herbert Hope Risley, in 1907, declared, "We are overwhelmed with a mass of heterogeneous material, some of it misguided, some of it frankly seditious," in response to a deluge of imagery associated with the Cow Protection Movement.
[1] The main instruments of control imposed by the Press Act were financial securities which were vulnerable to confiscation in the event of any breach of the exceptionally wide provisions of the legislation.
The bill defined press offences as attempts to incite murder or anarchical outrages, to tamper with the loyalty of the Army or the Navy, to excite racial, class and religious animosity and hatred and contempt of the Government or a native prince, to incite criminal intimidation and interference with law and order, and to intimidate public servants with threats of injury.