©AFP
India often boasts of the robust health of its electoral democracy. But at least one crucial pillar of its democratic edifice – the right to free expression – is being rapidly eroded, with ominous implications.
The latest symptom of this fragility was the recent decision of Penguin India, an arm of US-based Penguin Random House, to destroy all unsold copies in India of
The Hindus: An Alternative History, by Sanskrit scholar Wendy Doniger, a University of Chicago professor.
The destruction of the books is part of a court-supervised settlement of criminal and civil cases filed against Penguin by Shiksha Andolan Bachao, or the Save Education Movement, a Hindu fundamentalist group seeking to purge India’s educational curriculum and bookstores of works it deems insulting or threatening to Hindu culture.
Ms Doniger’s treatment of ancient Hindu myths as human creations rather than divine truth – and her Freudian analysis of the tales – outraged the self-appointed guardians of Hindu orthodoxy. Penguin, which is 47 per cent owned by
Pearson – the Financial Times’ parent company – battled for four years to defend the book before settling.
After the settlement, Penguin warned of the increasing difficulties all publishers will face “to uphold international
standards of free expression” in India – citing highly elastic legal limits on free speech, which academics say encourage radical groups to mobilise for the suppression of works not to their personal taste.
Indeed, Ms Doniger’s book is just the latest of many works to be hounded out of India – or underground – by affronted religious conservatives emboldened by British colonial-era laws that make it a crime to “insult” a religion, or “promote disharmony” between groups.
Although India’s constitution guarantees free expression, liberal academics and writers say Indian authorities typically respond to attacks on creative works by pandering to the ranks of the offended rather than by vigorously defending the principle of free speech.
Meanwhile, Indian courts’ convoluted rulings in free speech cases have also eroded the confidence of writers and publishers of legal protection – or even of protection of their physical security – when confronted with individuals or groups upset with their work.
Until now, the primary targets in India’s intensifying culture wars have mostly been interpretations of religion and distant history.
In October 1988, then prime minister Rajiv Gandhi’s administration prohibited the import of Salman Rushdie’s “The Satanic Verses”, fearing the novel would inflame its Muslim minority. India has subsequently banned several other books – two by rightwing Hindus – considered highly inflammatory because of their critique of Islam.
India’s lack of commitment to free speech does not only constrain depictions of faith and distant history. It also poses a growing threat to Indians’ ability to vigorously debate the present
More recently, Hindu fundamentalists have aggressively mobilised against works they deem disrespectful to their pantheon of deities. In 2004, authorities banned a history of a venerated 17th century king, Shivaji, after an irate mob ransacked a manuscript library where the author, an American professor, had researched the book.
The late Maqbool Fida Husain, India’s most celebrated modern painter, was driven into self-imposed exile in 2006, after his canvasses – some of which depicted Hindu deities naked – were repeatedly vandalised by rightwing Hindus, who also filed multiple criminal complaints against him.
But India’s lack of commitment to free speech does not only constrain depictions of faith and distant history. It also poses a growing threat to Indians’ ability to vigorously debate the present – including the nexus between politicians and large Indian companies, the performance of key institutions, and the track records of political parties, or powerful individuals.
In January, Bloomsbury India withdrew
The Descent of Air India, by a former executive director of the money-losing state carrier, after the former civil aviation minister, Praful Patel, filed a lawsuit against it. Bloomsbury publicly apologised to Mr Patel for any embarrassment it might have caused.
August 2013: As newspaper circulations decline globally, threatening the future of printed news, India continues to defy the trend, where despite an economic slowdown the industry grew more than 7% in 2012.
The Kolkata High Court also in January suppressed publication and distribution of
Sahara: The Untold Story, about one of India’s most mysterious business groups, which is currently locked in a bitter stand-off with the Securities and Exchange Board.
Three years ago, an award-winning 1991 novel was removed from the University of Mumbai’s curriculum, after the late Bal Thackeray, leader of the rightwing Shiv Sena, objected to how he and his party were depicted in the fictionalised account.
Ten years ago, courts also suppressed a sociological monograph,
Taking the State to Court – Public Interest Litigation and the Public Sphere in Metropolitan India, by issuing a contempt notice to the author, Hans Dembowski, and publisher, Oxford University Press.
The case was never heard, but the book remains out of circulation, a case of what Mr Dembowski has called “stealth censorship.”
As India gears up for parliamentary elections that the Hindu nationalist
Bharatiya Janata Party is widely expected to win, liberal Indians are increasingly anxious about further restrictions on the space for public discourse, and dissent. Certainly under the past 10 years of Congress rule, dangerous precedents have been set
Freedom of speech shrinks in India, the world’s largest democracy - FT.com
. It clearly shows a bias towards the "English literature".
