Manjula Narayan - Why it's easy to 'ban' books in India // MANU JOSEPH - A Paradise for Those Who Take Offense (2013)

By Dilip -
If any more proof was needed of the nation's inexorable move towards a Right led by anti-intellectuals virulently opposed to Hinduism’s most admirable characteristic, its openness to a multiplicity of interpretations, Penguin India has supplied it by agreeing to pulp copies of Wendy Doniger’s The Hindus: An Alternative History (click title for free download)
According to these severely intellectually-challenged right wingers – the intelligent ones, sadly, seem to have been shouted down by the rabid mob that yells loudest on social networking – no one should present alternative ideas of anything even remotely to do with Hinduism. So a tweet about abysmal hygiene and safety at the Kumbh Mela leads, not to a discussion on the need to improve conditions at one of the largest congregations on earth, but a barrage of semi-literate abuse. Of a piece with this, an excerpt of Doniger’s admirable later book On Hinduism in Hindustan Times has a comment thread filled with sexual comments aimed at Doniger.
Things have been moving in this direction for years. The Indian government’s craven ban of The Satanic Verses in 1988 sparked the we-are-more-offended-than-thou challenge, a sort of namaaz-versus-jagran competition. In the years since then, it has become clear that attacks on literature and culture are the best way to get noticed. Don’t like a book, burn it, the original Rushdie haters said. The Hindu anti-Intellectual Right does things slightly differently: “That’s the sort of thing the lunatic fringe that owes allegiance to Abrahamic religions indulges in. Show everyone we are different, more civilized. Work to ban the book. It offends our religion. Not sure which of its numerous strands… but who cares about particulars!”
The problem, increasingly, in this Republic of the Gagged, is that everything seems to offend. The functioning of the sociology department at Delhi University is frequently disrupted by right wing student factions who object to the “pseudo seculars” there. These were the same worthy folk who objected to AK Ramanujan’s Three Hundred Ramayanas. Their sustained campaign led to the Delhi University Academic Council dropping the essay from the history syllabus.
This hyper sensitivity to the feelings of the lunatic fringe – okay, perhaps it’s no longer the fringe, perhaps everyone in this nation is now humourless and quick to take offence – has meant that the best way to become famous in the age of 24/7 TV is to shout the loudest, to behave enraged even if all you care about is your 15 minutes of fame. Unknown outfits suddenly become famous as in the case of the Hindu Janjagran Samiti that objected to the staging of a play at the recently concluded Kala Ghoda Festival, or Sri Ram Sena that attacked women at a pub in Mangalore a few years ago and was rewarded with hundreds of lurid pink panties for their pains. It enlivens the news pages and definitely excites already dangerously excitable television anchors. You can be sure, though, that it does nothing for the intellectual life of this nation.
After universities and cultural festivals, it’s now the turn of venerable publishing houses to bend over backwards and stick their heads through their literary legs. According to the agreement signed February 4, 2014, that’s available online, Penguin Books India has agreed to immediately withdraw all published copies of Wendy Doniger’s book and even destroy the copies they still have. As usual, the enraged party belongs to an un-famous outfit called the Shiksha Bachao Andolan.
Publisher of Penguin India Chiki Sarkar did not respond to a text, and Hemali Sodhi, head of marketing, Penguin India, said, in an email, that the company would not be issuing any statement or comment — in itself a huge comment.
Those who dislike being dictated to by the ultra saffron thought police can, however, access links to Doniger’s book on Twitter. Of course, the Shiksha Bachao Andolan is probably plotting the downfall of Twitter CEO Dick Costolo even as you read this.
MANU JOSEPH - (2013) A Paradise for Those Who Take Offense
One of India’s favorite spectator sports is “taking offense.” People go about their lives, brushing their teeth, ironing their shirts, waiting for the bus. Then some man somewhere says something ordinary and a community erupts in what looks like joy even though they say they are offended. They go in a carnival procession to some place to announce that they are offended, often laughing and waving to the television cameras. Politicians express their deep hurt at what the man has said and demand swift action from other politicians. The police file criminal charges against the offender, and the offender then begins to say he has been misquoted, possibly by himself...
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/31/world/asia/31iht-letter31.html?smid=tw-share&_r=1&

 See also:
Taslima moves Supreme Court against FIR over tweet // SC accords protection to Tasleema Nasreen from arrest

Prof Irfan Habib's remark on AMU minority character causes stir

Javed Anand - Ms Wadud, we are ashamed

Academic research on Rushdie's literary work sabotaged by Deoband Ulema

VHP disrupts Hyderabad's Kashmir Film Festival

Gita Sahgal - Bangladesh: Blasphemy, Genocide and Violence Against Women

Taslima Nasreen - ‘Religion Is The Biggest Bane For Any Democracy’

Syed Badrul Ahsan calls for Taslima's return - Our writers, our moral parameters


Two persons arrested for Facebook post on Mumbai shutdown after Bal Thackeray's death

Venue for a Speech on Tamas - A Chronicle of an Event That Should Never Have Happened

Call on the Catholic Archdiocese of Bombay to encourage the withdrawal of complaints against Indian Rationalist Sanal Edamaruku

LUMS fires Dr. Pervez Hoodbhoy

Maryam Namazie: Defend Bangladesh's Bloggers
Inquisition: The Reign of Fear

Inquisition and Extermination in Twentieth-Century Spain


Salim Mansur - Islam and Islamism

Tableeghi Jamaat members can knock at any door anywhere in the West. But Christian missionaries cannot proselytize the Muslim world

‘Freedom to criticize religion is a touchstone of free expression’ - Interview with Gilbert Achcar

 WOLE SOYINKA: Religion Against Humanity

IHEU Freedom of Thought Report 2013: Death penalty for atheism in 13 countries

Salman Rushdie - ON CENSORSHIP

Salman Rushdie - We're all too easily offended these days

New Age Islam Website Is Banned In Pakistan

Taksim, Convergence, and Secular Space // Turkey, the end of Islamism with a human face

Khaled Ahmed - A culture of haters

Khaled Ahmed - Rollback nations (NEWSWEEK PAKISTAN)

Interview with Karima Bennoune, author of 'Your Fatwa Does Not Apply Here'

Woman filmmaker in Iran sentenced to 18 months in prison 

The religious persecution of Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd (1945-2010)/ Interview: My life fighting intolerance/ Mahmoud Mohammed Taha & the Second Message of Islam

Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd's Legacy (Library of writings)

Mahmoud Mohammed Taha (Author of Second Message of Islam); also known as Ustaz Mahmoud Mohammed Taha, was a Sudanese religious thinker, leader, and trained engineer. He was executed for apostasy at the age of 76 by the regime of Gaafar Nimeiry. (See his Court statement)
THE MODERATE MARTYR - A radically peaceful vision of Islam

Najam Sethi - Pakistan: Pluralism and tolerance
Unfortunately, attempts to rationalize and modernize our education system have continuously foundered on the rock of misplaced, conservative or politically motivated religious elements in society..Two such cases have caught headlines recently. The first is an attempt by Imran Khan's PTI government in KPK to undo the rational cleansing of the textbooks by the previous ANP government by reinserting nations of jihad and "Islamic" vice and virtue into the curricula. The second is an attempt by a section of the media to devalue the teaching of "comparative" religion in schools in which the values of relative compassion, mutual respect and human dignity common to all religions are emphasized. 
Editor, New Age Islam denounces Jihadi Literature in the Islamic World

The St. Petersburg Declaration (2007)
We are secular Muslims, and secular persons of Muslim societies. We are believers, doubters, and unbelievers, brought together by a great struggle, not between the West and Islam, but between the free and the unfree. // We affirm the inviolable freedom of the individual conscience. We believe in the equality of all human persons. // We insist upon the separation of religion from state and the observance of universal human rights. // We find traditions of liberty, rationality, and tolerance in the rich histories of pre-Islamic and Islamic societies. These values do not belong to the West or the East; they are the common moral heritage of humankind.  We see no colonialism, racism, or so-called "Islamaphobia" in submitting Islamic practices to criticism or condemnation when they violate human reason or rights...


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