In his seminal work, A History of Reading, the Argentinian writer Alberto Manguel recounts the young Goethe witnessing the burning of a banned book in Frankfurt. Goethe felt as if he was at an execution. ‘To see an inanimate object being punished, is in and of itself something truly terrible.’ While burning and wholesale destruction of books in libraries has been a favourite pastime of imperialist conquests throughout world history, the history of reading is replete with records of banning and burning censored books from the earliest papyrus scrolls to books of modern times. India too does not have a glorious record as far as censorship and banning of books are concerned. Perumal Murugan’s Maadhorubaagan, Hansda Sowendra’s The Adivasi Shall Not Dance and Priyanka Pathak-Narain’s From Godman to Tycoon are the latest instances of agencies of the state exercising praetorian power.
Admittedly, there are other forms of censorship over the print media, television and film but it’s perhaps the ban on books that does not evoke widespread and sustained outrage in society. To understand this, we need to look at the place of books in our society. We also need to understand Goethe’s pain at seeing the book as an ‘inanimate’ object being burnt. The book did not have the means to save itself. Could the book fight back and were remedies open to it? Yes it could, under special circumstances. But to understand this, we need to understand the role of publishers who were responsible for the book in the first place.
Every publisher puts out a book in the public domain after due diligence. Great care is taken to cross-check all the information in the book. The publishing contract does indemnify the publisher against the author’s content but in law, the publisher and the author are both responsible for the content. There have been cases where facts in a book are found to be inaccurate or the contents are deemed to be damaging to the reputation of a public figure. In a majority of cases, the book is withdrawn from circulation, the facts rechecked and revised, and controversial matter deleted. The book is then reissued. Only in rare cases was the contents of a book found to be so objectionable that it had to be banned in its entirety.
In two recent cases, that of Murugan and Sowendra, the publication of the respective books was marked by agitation and violence. This, in Murugan’s case, only after the English translation was published, the original Tamil version having been published earlier to critical acclaim and no social disturbance at all. In the case of Sowendra, the threat of violence was whipped up and orchestrated till the state government banned the book.
The threat of the mob being at your door can be very real or it may be even be used as an euphemism to force you to acquiesce. In a number of recent cases, it has been frighteningly all too real. As remedies against arbitrary action by the authorities, the publisher can take recourse to legal means. But this is a long drawn-out and expensive process even for publishers who have the means. There is also no guarantee that even after the legal sanction, sentiments may not be whipped up against the book again.
The publisher is a business entity. Publishing is a risky business for no one can predict with any accuracy how a book would do in the market. Along with the book, the publishers too are soft targets. Compromises sometimes need to be made simply to keep the business going.
Publishers would indeed be very happy at the increasing attention being given to books. Unfortunately, the increasing attention is sinister by design. A society should have the right to think, dissent and express opinions without fear or favour. Publishers would be far happier that in the course of dissent over a book, another book is written with a contrary point of view. We have always been a pluralistic society and have accommodated different shades of opinion. The mob at our door will prove detrimental and costly.
sridbalan@gmail.com
Sridhar Balan
A Senior professional in the publishing industry. He has worked with Oxford University Press India and Ratna Sagar P. Ltd.
