[INDOLOGY] Public statement from Wendy Doniger

[Dominik Wujastyk]

I am pleased to circulate the following statement at Wendy Doniger's
request:

--------------------------------------

Dear friends, I have had literally hundreds of requests for interviews, in
various
media, and I can’t do them all. So here is a statement that you may use. I
hope
it’s enough; it’s the best I can do right now. I intend to write a longer
article for
publication in a couple of weeks. Yours with gratitude for your courage and
compassion, wendy


I was thrilled and moved by the great number of messages of support that I
received, not merely from friends and colleagues but from people in India
that I
have never met, who had read and loved The Hindus, and by news and media
people, all of whom expressed their outrage and sadness and their wish to
help
me in any way they could. I was, of course, angry and disappointed to see
this
happen, and I am deeply troubled by what it foretells for free speech in
India in
the present, and steadily worsening, political climate. And as a publisher’s
daughter, I particularly wince at the knowledge that the existing books
(unless
they are bought out quickly by people intrigued by all the brouhaha) will be
pulped. But I do not blame Penguin Books, India. Other publishers have just
quietly withdrawn other books without making the effort that Penguin made to
save this book. Penguin, India, took this book on knowing that it would stir
anger in the Hindutva ranks, and they defended it in the courts for four
years,
both as a civil and as a criminal suit.

They were finally defeated by the true villain of this piece—the Indian law
that makes it a criminal rather than civil offense 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. An example at random,
from the lawsuit in question:

  ‘That YOU NOTICEE has hurt the religious feelings of millions of Hindus by
  declaring that Ramayana is a fiction. “Placing the Ramayan in its
historical
  contexts demonstrates that it is a work of fiction, created by human
authors, who
  lived at various times……….” (P.662) This breaches section 295A of the
Indian
  Penal Code (IPC). ‘

Finally, I am glad that, in the age of the Internet, it is no longer
possible to
suppress a book. The Hindus is available on Kindle; and if legal means of
publication fail, the Internet has other ways of keeping books in
circulation.

People in India will always be able to read books of all sorts, including
some that
may offend some Hindus.


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