Dear George,

At first I was furious with Penguin India, but having read Wendy's account of how they fought for her book, I have revised my opinion. I learned with astonishment about the Indian law that criminalizes the publisher of a book that causes offence to any Hindu. It is simply incredible, as a piece of law.

So, I think Wendy is probably right, and the culprit is the Indian Penal Code.

http://indiankanoon.org/doc/1803184/ :

Central Government Act

Section 295A in The Indian Penal Code, 1860

295A. 5[ Deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings of any class by insulting its religion or religious beliefs.-- Whoever, with deliberate and malicious intention of outraging the religious feelings of any class of 6[ citizens of India], 7[ by words, either spoken or written, or by signs or by visible representations or otherwise] insults or attempts to insult the religion or the religious beliefs of that class, shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to 8[ three years], or with fine, or with both.]

I am no historian of law. But this looks to me as though it was framed by the British administration, shortly after the Rebellion.

However inappropriate the application of this law to modern scholarly publishing, I remain incredulous that the court decided that it could be established that Wendy showed "deliberate and malicious intention of outraging the religious feeling."

I am not sure what action would be appropriate in this case. In the USA, a petition against the book was signed by 10k people. Again, I suppose we could try a petition, but it would not make any difference, and the number of indologists is smaller by several orders than the number of Hindus.

I think the deeper issue here is the fact that an ignorant person (or persons) who does not have sufficient specialist education to understand a particular book is nevertheless able to bring a case that is taken seriously by an Indian court and leads to the banning of that book. Imagine an uneducated farmer taking exception to the work of a nuclear physicist. Would a court say that the physicist should not do his research or publish his findings?

Best,
Dominik

--
Dr Dominik Wujastyk
Department of South Asia, Tibetan and Buddhist Studies,
University of Vienna,
Spitalgasse 2-4, Courtyard 2, Entrance 2.1
1090 Vienna, Austria
and
Adjunct Professor,
Division of Health and Humanities,
St. John's Research Institute, Bangalore, India.
Project | home page | HSSA | PGP

On 11 February 2014 20:55, George Thompson <gthomgt@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 authors?

George

On Tue, Feb 11, 2014 at 2:09 PM, George Thompson <gthomgt@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@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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