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quietly withdrawn other books without making the effort that Penguin made to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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