The controversy on censorship broke loose in late 2013 with the withdrawal of Wendy Doniger’s The Hindus: An Alternative History after a court case by Dina Nath Batra against Penguin and the withdrawal of Jitendra Bhargava’s The Descent of Air India by Bloomsbury following a legal notice by then minister Praful Patel. Since then, publishers have been on the back foot pulping books with ostensibly controversial content that could land them in legal or political trouble.
When we caught up with Richard Charkin of Bloomsbury at the Globalocal get-together in February, he said, “I cannot jeopardize the personal lives of the editor, publisher, or the CEO of my publishing house to save a book.” When told about this justification, an undersecretary of the Government of India retorted, “To save a book, we cannot jeopardize the lives of people and have a law and order situation at hand, but you have to talk to the Home Secretary to get the official response.”
Civil litigation wears down business
Apart from the political slugfest on religion, culture and society in India that supposedly creates a law and order problem, also at issue are defamation laws that stop the publishing of many books that take on serious economic offences such as The Descent of Air India. It is high time that the publishers get ready to talk with the government on critical censorship issues. Vivek Mehra, managing director of Sage and an office bearer of the Publishers Association representing multinational publishers in India said to us that the matter was being discussed internally and the association would soon approach the government. “We have successfully interacted with the government on the copyright and piracy issue in the past and would soon send a representation on the censorship issue,” says Mehra.
The laws in India make publishing house executives personally liable for criminal offense for any published
matter says Dahlia Sen-Oberoi attorney for major publishing houses like Bertelsmann-Penguin, Harper Collins, Hachette India and Rupa. Any of the people remotely connected with the book can be arrested and brought to court. “In civil cases of defamation, it is the delay in the courts that hurt. I am just back from Mumbai after attending a 20-year-old civil defamation suit against a publisher that suddenly surfaced after the central government decided to fast track all pending litigation,” says Sen- Oberoi. “It has just entered the trial phase but I am happy that it has been fast tracked and I hope that the case will be quickly over.”
Controversies are nothing new to the publishing industry. Thomas Abraham managing director of Hachette India confirms, “There have always been at least two to three such books in the news at any given time. As to getting together, I think the relevant committees of the publishing associations are the ones who can act and there is talk of having meetings on this.” Abraham elaborates, “Essentially all those laws which in their current form exist un-amended are a source of concern. Anybody can file a case and bank on the harassment of criminal procedure and the fact that if you have enough financial backing that is non- business, you can wear a business
house down — legal solutions in India are never ending and prohibitively expensive.”
Get off your high horse
Caroline Newbury of the Random House Penguin group reiterated its stand on the issue that unfortunately could be interpreted as — sorry, we did not read the fine print of the law earlier and though we tried we finally bowed under pressure. Her response says, “We also have a moral responsibility to protect our employees against threats and harassment where we can. The settlement reached by Penguin brings to a close a four-year legal process in which Penguin has defended the publication of the Indian edition of The Hindus by Wendy Doniger. We have published, in succession, hardcover, paperback and eBook editions of the title. International editions of the book remain available physically and digitally to Indian readers who still wish to purchase it.
We stand by our original decision to publish The Hindus just as we stand by the decision to publish other books that we know may cause offence to some segments of our readership. We believe, however, that the Indian Penal Code, and in particular section 295A of that code, will make it increasingly difficult for any Indian publisher to uphold international standards of free
expression without deliberately placing itself outside the law. This is, we believe, an issue of great significance not just for the protection of creative freedoms in India but also for the defence of fundamental human rights.”
There is a word of caution for publishers from the legal eagles who know how the judicial system works globally. “Publishers must get off their
high horse and respect the law of the land wherever they are,” says Sen- Oberoi. It is true that with anti-Hindu and anti-Muslim writing increasingly showing up in multi-racial and multi- cultural societies like India it is difficult to draw a line to what is acceptable and what is not, but global publishers must be careful of local sensitivities and laws of the land wherever they publish in the world.
Conviction or caution
Vivek Mehra managing director of academic publisher Sage says that it specializes in religious studies and has several books that are more explosive. “Since they are backed by deep research and a conviction of the publisher that they will withstand rigorous scrutiny, they have not come under similar fire,” says Mehra. “Soon after the Penguin controversy we received a note from our board of directors in the States that they would back us to the last day if withdrawal pressure was brought on us for any book published in India. They also told us that in case we have erroneously published any book without due diligence, we must. accept our mistake and withdraw the same.”
Sen-Oberoi who represented Penguin in The Hindus case says fighting criminal cases is a very difficult proposition because the personal liability of employees remains till settlement and given the long settlement periods often carries on even after ceasing employment. Her advice is to steer clearly out of controversy, respect the laws of the land and understand the ground realities of multi-cultural societies.
However Malayalam publisher DC Books’ Ravi Deecee refused to back off even when his house and office were stoned by followers of a religious sect of Mata Amritanandamayi Math, following the translation of a mémoir written by Gail ‘Gayatri’ Tredwell — a former close disciple of Mata Amritanandamayi a spiritual leader from Kottayam. Published abroad in English, the sales of the Malayalam version of Holy Hell: A Memoir of Faith, Devotion, and Pure Madness are currently suspended by the Kerala High Court till a decision is reached on the appeal to withdraw the book.
