Ban on books: Reading between the lines

The political controversy over Gen Manoj Mukund Naravane’s (retd) unpublished autobiography has once again brought the spotlight on the banning, withdrawal and pulping of books in India, with the government of India’s ban on the import of Salman Rushdie’s ‘The Satanic Verses’ being the most famous case.

Gen Naravane became the 28th Chief of the Indian Army in 2019 and retired in April 2022. Penguin Random House India (PRHI) had announced his memoir, ‘Four Stars of Destiny’, in November 2023, with a January 2024 release scheduled. The publisher marketed it as “The explosive autobiography of India’s twenty-eighth Chief of the Army Staff.” However, the launch was halted after news reports highlighted accounts in the book regarding the 2020 India-China border standoff and the contentious Agnipath recruitment scheme.

The issue has now been brought into the political arena by Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, who claims that the book contains a detailed account of events related to Ladakh and the Army’s response to Chinese troop movements. PRHI has said in a statement on social media that the book has not gone into publishing. It read:

“In light of recent public discourse and media reporting, Penguin Random House India would like to clarify that we hold the sole publishing rights for the book ‘Four Stars of Destiny’, a memoir by General Manoj Mukund Naravane, former Chief of the Indian Army.

We wish to make it clear that the book has not gone into publication. No copies of the book — in print or digital form have been published, distributed, sold, or otherwise made available to the public by Penguin Random House India.”

This is, however, not the first time publishers in India have found themselves in the crosshairs over books they have released. In 2014, PRHI pulped Wendy Doniger’s ‘The Hindus: An Alternative History’ after the Shiksha Bachao Andolan Samiti filed civil and criminal suits in a court in New Delhi, alleging that the book misrepresented Hindu mythology. Penguin reached an out-of-court settlement with Dinanath Batra of the SBA after fighting the case for four years. The publisher said that “intolerant and restrictive” Indian laws had forced it to remove the book from sale. Doniger stated: “They (the publisher) were finally defeated by the true villain of this piece — the Indian law that makes it a criminal rather than civil offence to publish a book that offends any Hindu, a law that jeopardizes the physical safety of any publisher, no matter how ludicrous the accusation brought against a book.”

What is worrisome is that these are not isolated instances. In 2014, Megha Kumar’s book, ‘Communalism and Sexual Violence: Ahmedabad Since 1969’, was pulled from the market by Orient Blackswan after being on sale for a month, or, as the publisher said, “set aside” for “comprehensive reassessment.” This too followed Batra’s intervention. The book was later published by Tulika Books in 2017.

In 2014, Jitender Bhargava’s ‘The Descent of Air India’ was withdrawn by Bloomsbury India after a defamation case was filed by then aviation minister Praful Patel. The book highlighted the financial downfall of the public carrier. It was later self-published by the author and is now available online.

Earlier, in 2003, ‘Shivaji: Hindu King in Islamic India’ by James Laine was withdrawn. In 2010, Rohinton Mistry’s ‘Such a Long Journey’ was dropped from Mumbai University’s curriculum following a complaint by Aditya Thackeray, who claimed it contained abusive language against his grandfather, Bal Thackeray.