This amendment to the Indian Penal Code was coupled with an emerging understanding of religion as rooted exclusively in sentiment. - C. S. Adcock

When coordinated acts of violence are justified as the inevitable result of hurt feelings, legal precautions against violent displays of religious passion may be said to have backfired.

In India, the notion that to be truly tolerant in religion is to refrain from criticism of religion is a widespread secularist ideal. But this ideal has long been conjoined with the assumption that the party criticized will be unable to contain violent reaction. One result has been to give strategic value to violence as a way of proving the point.

The association of sentiment and violence enshrined in section 295A was not only a product of concerns with law and order; it was also the result of a critical view of religious proselytizing. Section 295A was intended to provide a legal tool to restrain the religious criticism associated with proselytizing by the Arya Samaj.