A three-judge bench of the Supreme Court on Wednesday dismissed a petition seeking to delete certain parts of a Malayalam novel “Meesha,” which according to the petitioner, was “perceived to be derogatory to temple-going Hindu women,” according to an article in The Hindu.

The bench, led by Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra, said that “the fundamental right of an author to freely express oneself cannot be held hostage to the vagaries of subjective perceptions of random persons.”

According to the report, the court also said that banning of books choked the free flow of ideas. Justice D.Y. Chandrachud, who was one of the three members on the Bench, said it could not make a virtue of banning literary works.

“You are giving undue importance to this kind of stuff. In the age of the Internet, you are making this an issue. It is best forgotten,” he said.

The petitioner—who goes by the name of N. Radhakrishnan, a resident of Delhi who refers to himself as a “proud Hindu,”—said that the offending parts of the novel penned by author S. Hareesh, “insulted Brahmin priests in temples and amounted to a casteist/racist slur.” He further claimed that the offensive part was a “conversation taking place between two characters” that portrayed women as “sex objects.”

He also said that this could even become a “trigger for mob violence.”