dna edit: Stop the capitulation

Who is Dinanath Batra? Not a man who is famous or even particularly notorious but a little known RSS pracharak back in our reckoning as the centre of another debate on the freedom of expression in fearful times. There have to be limits to this freedom, he believes, and publishers big and small seem to agree as they comply with his blinkered world view. In the latest, Orient Blackswan has “set aside” a book on communalism and sexual violence in Ahmedabad by Oxford scholar Megha Kumar — and not even for the asking.

Batra’s organisation, Shiksha Bachao Andolan Samiti, that few had heard of before last year when its objections to Wendy Doniger’s books on Hinduism led to Penguin pulping one and Aleph withdrawing the other, had in this case not even targeted Kumar’s Communalism and Sexual Violence: Ahmedabad Since 1969. What it had done was send a legal notice on another book, the 10-year-old Plassey to Partition: A History of Modern India, saying that it defamed the RSS. In what can only be construed as panic and a dangerous precedent, Orient Blackswan wrote to Kumar that it was undertaking a “pre-release assessment of books that might attract similar reactions”. It also cited security fears for its staff and their families.

It’s a classic case of bending over backwards to please when not even asked to do so. Kumar has contended that her book was not in the pre-release category. It had been on sale since April 15 and she herself had bought a copy of it. More importantly, her manuscript was submitted two years ago during which it had been subjected to the vigorous assessment that all academic works go through.

This then amounts to self censorship in rewind mode, the marginalisation of long established systems of checks and balances inbuilt into the system. This abject caving in, first by powerful publishers like Penguin and Aleph and now by the relatively smaller Orient Blackswan, means that people like Batra can bank on the prevailing climate of insecurity and intolerance to have their way. They don’t have to demand, they merely need to gesture for the ninepins to fall.

This bodes ill, and not just for academics. Dissent and differences of opinion should be welcomed as signs of a robust democracy. As more than one academic has pointed out, Batra is free to have a counter opinion and express it in another book. Pulping books, banning them or stopping publication cannot be the way.

Of course, Batra is only a case in point. Salman Rushdie, Taslima Nasreen, Rohinton Mistry... the list of authors who have faced the brunt of this intolerance and whose works have been banned is long. This is also not something confined to the world of letters. MF Husain, one of India’s best known artists, was forced into exile and died there; controversial films often face an outright ban and exhibitors scared that their halls will be burnt down; exhibitions such as those showcasing Pakistani art meet much the same fate with galleries being vandalised.

This intolerance extends across party lines and every government has been at fault in acquiescing. Antiquated British era laws have only aided this capitulation. The new government has the opportunity to show that it is different. But will it?