[INDOLOGY] Public statement from Wendy Doniger

[George Thompson]

Dear Dominik et al.,

Given Wendy's defense of Penguin India, what other alternatives are
available to those of us who are Penguin India authors?

George


On Tue, Feb 11, 2014 at 2:09 PM, George Thompson <gthomgt at gmail.com> wrote:

> Dear Dominik et al.,
>
> Given Wendy's defense of Penguin India, what other alternatives are
> available to those of us who are Penguin India auth
>
>
> On Tue, Feb 11, 2014 at 12:49 PM, Dominik Wujastyk <wujastyk at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> 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 quietly withdrawn other books without making the effort that Penguin made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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>>
>
>


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