Stray sentences not enough to ban book, says apex court

Giving impetus to freedom of speech and expression, the Supreme Court (SC) has ruled that a book or any written material cannot be banned on the basis of “stray sentences” drawn from the contents. The contents as a whole must be considered and also the “class of readers” addressed must be kept in mind.

The ruling accompanies the SC’s dismissal on Friday of the Maharashtra government’s appeal against the lifting of an eight-year-old ban on the 127-page book Shivaji: Hindu King in Islamic India by James Laine, published by Oxford University Press.

The SC bench of justices DK Jain and HL Dattu also laid down guidelines for the government to use section 95 of the CrPC for banning objectionable written material.

The bench said that the probable consequences of “offending material” must be judged from the standards of reasonable, strong-minded and courageous men, and not vacillating minds.

Nor of those who sense danger in every hostile point of view.
But the SC also has a word of caution for writers: If the writing is calculated to promote feelings of enmity or hatred, the author can’t defend his work for which procedures have been initiated under section 153-A of the Indian Penal Code.

Following the judgment, a new movement is building up in Maharashtra against the book. But analysts say the government will find it difficult to form a cogent argument that may be acceptable to the court to again ban the book.

The government based its appeal on two media reports which said that about 125 activists of the Sambhaji Brigade ransacked the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute (BORI), Pune, destroyed valuable literary works, and humiliated Sanskrit scholar Shashikant Bahulkar, who had assisted Laine. The government also quoted passages from the book, saying these could endanger tranquillity and public order.

The SC said: “[The government’s] grounds must necessarily be the effect or the tendency of matters contained in the offending publication, either as a whole or in portions, as illustrated by passages which the government may choose.”

It said that mere repetition of an opinion or reproduction of the provision will not satisfy the requirement of a valid notification. However, it is not necessary that the notification bear a verbatim record of the forfeited material.

In its observation on writers, the SC says that a writer can’t say his writing “contains a truthful kind of past events or is otherwise supported by good authority”. “Adherence to the strict path of history is not by itself a complete defence to a charge under the CrPC section.”