THE OFFENDED INDIAN

Penguin's withdrawal of Wendy Doniger's celebrated book on Hinduism is a bleak reminder of how the thought police is being allowed to run riot in India

Dinanath Batra is a satisfied man. The president of Shiksha Bachao Andolan Samiti ( SBAS), a right-wing organisation close to the RSS, his phone has not stopped ringing ever since Penguin India agreed to settle a civil suit filed by him in 2011 by recalling and

pulping copies of The Hindus: An

Alternative History. Its author Wendy Doniger, a 74-year-old professor of the University of Chicago Divinity School, a Sanskrit scholar and Indologist, has expressed anger and disappointment by calling it a “serious attack on freedom of speech in India”. But she takes comfort in the fact that it is not possible to keep a book down in the age of the Internet, Her work is still available on Kindle worldwide.

That Indian law has become increasingly accommodating of the silencing of books to avoid conflicts is alarming. A book by Jitender Bhargava’s on Air-India had recently been withdrawn from the market by its publishers Bloomsbury. The release of Tamal Bandyopadhyay's book on Sahara India was stayed by court. After the dispute surrounding James Laine’s book on Shivaji, alternative histories on him are not being published. And Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses continues to be banned.

Batra was also one of the petitioners who moved the Delhi High Court in 2008 to drop A.K. Ramanujan’s famous essay on the many culturally specific versions of the Ramayana from Delhi University’s history syllabus. Among those who had designed the undergraduate course was Upinder Singh, daughter of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

Sitting in his his modest office in Naraina Vihar, Delhi, surrounded by awards and trophies gathered during his 30-year teaching career, Batra says the pulping of The Hindus… is a “big victory”. He also proclaims it won’t be his last. It had been his reputation as a self-proclaimed “defender of Indian pride” that had brought critics of Doniger’s 700-page book to his doorstep. The book had attracted protests in 2010 in New York, where it had been nominated for an award.

When local protesters got in touch with Batra, he read the book and was

“IN HINDU TEXTS, THE EROTIC AND THE ASCETIC STREAMS HAVE ALWAYS EXISTED TOGETHER.”

Sudhir Kakar

SCHOLAR “THE BOOK IS INSULTING TO INDIAN GODS, RELIGIOUS LEADERS AND TEXTS.”

Dinanath Batra

PETITIONER

enraged. “The book is insulting to Indian gods and goddesses, religious leaders and texts, and even freedom fighters,” he says. Batra is convinced that Doniger’s book is malevolent and should not be sold, seen, or even discussed in India. Which is ironic considering his objection has put it so prominently on the discussion table.

Penguin India has still not offered a comment on why they decided against pursuing the law suit, a silence that has alarmed the international publishing house’s list of celebrated writers including Arundhati Roy, who demanded to know what had brought

on this withdrawal.

Batra’s win is seen as the advent of the Offended Indian. His biggest aid, and the free-thinker’s biggest enemy, as Doniger has pointed out in response to the ban, is Section 295A of the Indian Penal Code ( IPC). This section vaguely allows “deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings of any class by insulting its religion or religious beliefs” to be prosecuted as a criminal offence. It allows anyone to shut down pluralistic view points.

The primary allegation against Doniger is her eroticisation of Hindu history and mythology. She has been a pop star in the pantheon of more sober indologists, identifiable because of the vibrancy and sensuality she introduced into her readings. “There is no doubt that Wendy has a tendency to be overly sexual, sensational, and that she loves to heckle and bait while pleading innocence. That is her style,” says mythologist and author Devdutt Pattanaik.

When scholar Sudhir Kakar, under-

It is no longer possible to simply ban books in the age of the Internet. For that, and for all the people who have expressed outrage over this, I am deeply grateful.” Wendy Doniger AUTHOR

took a reinterpretation of the Kama

sutra in association with Doniger in the 1990s, they both looked at is as a life text. They reinterpreted the ancient text, originally translated by Sir Richard Burton into English, into a treatise on life, partnership, and relationship codes—not just the sexual positions that it is known for. As they found the ascetic in the erotic in

Kamasutra, Doniger went on to explore the erotic in the ascetic in The

Hindus…, Kakar explains. “In Hindu texts, the erotic and the ascetic streams have traditionally existed together—each fighting for domination,” Kakar says. Doniger has been conscious of this duality and has striven to give both sides. In her essay included in the book Psychoanalysis, Culture

and Religion, published by Oxford University Press in 2013, Doniger explores the symbolism of the Shiva Lingam, clearly outlining both aspects: The symbolic and metaphorical as well as the phallic physical plane.

Batra’s petition raises a number of alleged factual errors, of locations and dates, within the text. But Kakar and Pattanaik point out that Indian history is notorious for mismatched dates. The normal practice is to issue a correction in following editions. Kakar says that inaccuracies in his own works have been rectified in this manner.

The larger question is not one of niggling lines or dates, but of the freedom of speech and the freedom to explore points of view in Hinduism.

While Batra, who opposes sex education in schools and opposes the “distortion” of Indian history, gets ready for his next fight, his latest victory is a far cry from what had transpired in India in 1954. Back then, artist Akbar Padamsee had stood his ground in court, and argued and defeated a case that objected to his painting ‘The Lovers’. Four other cases against freedom of speech were dismissed that year on the back of that win. “It would have set a precedent had I not stayed and fought it,” Padamsee recalls. A new precedent has been set now, and the absence of a fight-back is ominous.