The media, in India and abroad, has predictably had a field day over the settlement Penguin India entered into to recall and destroy all India-based copies of Wendy Doniger’s book, The Hindus: An Alternative History, against which a religious organisation filed criminal and civil cases.
The Mint carried an in-depth interview by Shougat Dasgupta with Dinanath Batra, one of the petitioners behind the Shiksha Bachao Andolan Committee that launched the petition to ban the book.
Doniger, meanwhile, released a statement blaming Indian laws for the self-censorship by her publisher:
I was thrilled and moved by the great number of messages of support that I received, not merely from friends and colleagues but from people in India that I have never met, who had read and loved The Hindus, and by news and media people, all of whom expressed their outrage and sadness and their wish to help me in any way they could.
I was, of course, angry and disappointed to see this happen, and I am deeply troubled by what it foretells for free speech in India in the present, and steadily worsening, political climate. And as a publisher’s daughter, I particularly wince at the knowledge that the existing books (unless they are bought out quickly by people intrigued by all the brouhaha) will be pulped.
But I do not blame Penguin Books, India. Other publishers have just quietly withdrawn other books without making the effort that Penguin made to save this book. Penguin, India, took this book on knowing that it would stir anger in the Hindutva ranks, and they defended it in the courts for four years, both as a civil and as a criminal suit.
They were finally defeated by the true villain of this piece—the Indian law that makes it a criminal rather than civil offense to publish a book that offends any Hindu, a law that jeopardizes the physical safety of any publisher, no matter how ludicrous the accusation brought against a book.
An example at random, from the lawsuit in question:
‘That YOU NOTICEE has hurt the religious feelings of millions of Hindus by declaring that Ramayana is a fiction. “Placing the Ramayan in its historical contexts demonstrates that it is a work of fiction, created by human authors, who lived at various times……….” (P.662) This breaches section 295A of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).’Finally, I am glad that, in the age of the Internet, it is no longer possible to suppress a book. The Hindus is available on Kindle; and if legal means of publication fail, the Internet has other ways of keeping books in circulation.
People in India will always be able to read books of all sorts, including some that may offend some Hindus.”
The Wall Street Journal reported that the book has shot up in the best seller lists of US-based online marketplace Amazon:
The paperback edition of “The Hindus” shot up Amazon’s best-seller list within a few hours on Tuesday, ranking No. 480 by mid-afternoon. The title had 77 customer reviews, earning an average rating of 2.5 stars out of 5. The book has sold about 11,000 hardcover and paperback copies in the U.S., according to Nielsen BookScan, which tracks around 85% of physical book sales in the U.S.
Legally India editor Kian Ganz will chat on CNN-IBN’s website at 5pm about freedom of speech and the book ban. Please click here to join and to ask questions.
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India is a democracy and it stands for freedom of speech. Therefore, a large section of the educated Indian middle-class and elite (who are an economic and social minority) seem to be as anguished as you are with the suppression of the book. I write to attempt mitigation of this anguish and, more importantly, to explain why a ban of the book is not the blot on democracy as it is being made out to be. Maybe you will understand why the book met such fate once you consider the alternate view, which seems to have been overlooked in an attempt to crusade for democracy.
First, Indian law does not criminalize books “that offends any Hindu” (Ms. Doniger’s words which I quote), but rather the publication of anything that has the tendency to offend any religion or group i.e. the laws are secular and compliant with the mandate of the Constitution of India, the Preamble of which declares India a secular nation (Indian laws which favour/ protect/ promote religious minorities are not necessarily unconstitutional, as long as they differentiate on some reasonable/ logical/ intelligible basis, while discrimination on grounds of religion is absolutely prohibited without any exceptions).
Second, many of your supporters have either not read your book (although the cover is as suggestive as a chef’s amuse-bouche), or they are ignorant of the laws and/or blind to the social realities of India (more below).
Third, the laws that you find offensive act as (constitutionally recognized) “reasonable restrictions” on the freedom of speech. Why they are reasonable must be understood in the context of India’s social realities, which includes the fact that the nation is undeniably religious (which is not a bad thing, given that the citizens of another large democracy – the USA – are big on religious faith and often vote for politicians who are religious / Church-going). Further, it also includes the fact that India is a very large country with a huge (mostly poor and largely under/un-educated) population and an extremely varied demography, which makes it all the more necessary to have safeguards to prevent communal unrest and to promote national integration. India is a federation of states (like the USA, albeit more Centre-oriented than State-oriented) and India has been struggling towards greater national integration, which journey has been plagued by too many unfortunate communal riots (among other things, like linguistic and cultural barriers). This fact makes it a constitutionally valid “reasonable restriction” to ban the publication of anything that has a tendency to offend religious sentiments. If a well-informed Hindu cites a bitter truth about Hinduism from a well-researched book, s/he may be lynched; if a non-Hindu does that, it may lead to a communal riot. A bookstore runs the danger of being torched by communal gangsters (not much different from the Klu Klux Clan) if it displays a book, the cover of which depicts a God of any religion in a socially unacceptable light. This unfortunate social reality makes it necessary to have some safeguards, not to mention that every other democracy has its own restrictions on freedoms, which restrictions are based on its individual social realities e.g. the US Patriot Act, the Prohibition, etc.
Fourth, except a few extremely enlightened souls, it is a global reality that people cannot accept alternate views when it comes to their religion e.g. most Muslims are offended by Rushdie’s Satanic Verses. Similarly, Jews, Catholics, Protestants – all have their own reservations against alternate theories that offend their religious beliefs. From times immemorial, and from even before the Crusades, humanity has been in turmoil on account of religious clashes and intolerance for views that offend religious faith. If your book was about alternate views about Christianity or Islam, it would have faced criticism at an international level and you would have faced worse experiences (think Rushdie).
Fifth, freedom of speech and expression is one of the most sacrosanct constitutional guarantees and recognized as a fundamental right by the Constitution of India, but it is available only to “citizens”; unlike certain other freedoms (e.g. freedom of life and liberty which requires compliance with due process), which are available even to non-citizens. This fact must be respected as the wisdom of the founding fathers of the nation, just like the USA continues to respect the wisdom behind the Second Amendment, which guarantees the right to carry firearms (despite so many random deaths caused by firing incidents in public places). The nationality of the author, therefore, remains relevant in the legal analysis.
Last, but not the least, Hindutva is aligned with communalism and rotten apples, while Hinduism is a religion that does not support Hindutva (just like Islam does not support terrorism).
Many people are lamenting the ban of your book as a blot on democracy, but an alternate view is also possible. Maybe the alternate view expressed above will explain the other perspective.
Views welcome. Please keep it nice if you can :)
The rest of what you've said is fairly absurd. The existence of the KKK didn't mean that the US government stopped abolishing slavery, giving African Americans rights, desegragating schools, etc. Your argument suggests that not doing the above would have been "reasonable restrictions" on freedom.
The fact that America is religious doesn't make it either desirable or acceptable to mix religion with law.
The fact that the country is poor doesn't make riots more likely--that's condescension that we usually blame developed western democracies for
The fact that a riot is possible because of a book is a terrible reason to ban it, which is the point of what the author said. The fact that the law provides for this is not in dispute.
It isn't just the author's right that has been violated. All of us get to buy one less book, one that we might have wanted. Maybe it is no good, but that's something for the reader to decide.
Try looking at it this way: The USA has passed laws like the Patriot Act, which imposes severe restrictions on human rights. They believe their social circumstances makes such law necessary for the greater good. By the same token, the IPC penalizes certain acts because they are very likely to cause riots and, thereby, compromise the greater good. Poverty of this country has everything to do with the low level of education/tolerance and the consequent religious zeal/intolerance (our vote bank swings on religion). The fact that an act is very likely to cause riots is an excellent reason to prevent such acts, if one is even remotely depressed by communal riots and can bother to shed a tear or two for the human lives which have been lost in riots. The law is always mixed with social realities because it is an instrument of social control. Therefore, I feel it is selfish to say that our freedom to read every book on the planet is bigger than the many lives which may be endangered if some books are allowed to circulate in the Indian market, notwithstanding the nature of their contents. Again, appreciate that this statement is NOT about Ms. Doniger’s book, but a general statement about books that create religious controversy. Is it unfortunate that we face such social realities or need such laws? Of course. Does that make the laws invalid on unreasonable? Obviously not!
The Indian laws have done things as wonderful as the US laws - abolishing slavery vis-a-vis abolishing bonded labour and zamindari, African-American empowerment vis-a-vis abolishing titles and penalizing atrocities against backward classes and religious minorities. Thus, you may come around to the point I am trying to make: let’s not randomly blame the Indian laws by ignoring to evaluate their reasonableness from a social perspective. Anyone who castigates Indian laws (because they miss the bigger picture or, in Ms. Doniger’s case, a foreigner who is not properly informed of India’s problems) needs to be told why the laws are necessary. Understand that every court interprets the reasonableness of a restriction by looking at social realities.
Think about it once again without pre-judging me by my perceived "ilk".
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