“When authoritarian regimes ban books it’s often a
validation of an author’s influence, a writer’s rite of passage. It is when
democratic countries stifle opinion that there is a breakdown in the equipoise
of the governing process. Censorship is assuredly an action that negates
debate. Difference of opinion is neither a cause nor a criterion for
elimination. It is just a convenient way out of intellectual engagement. If we
remove displeasing ideas, motives, and morals from our vocabulary are we not
creating prototypes of conformity?” – Jaya Padmanbhan
When I was 14, I was asked not to read Betsy by Harold
Robbins. I did, of course, read the book right away, hiding it within my
chemistry textbook. I remember Betsy having daring material on sex and drugs,
but what was most thrilling was the fact that I was reading a forbidden book.
From
the time my daughter Kavya was 12 she has been eager to read Nabokov’s Lolita.
“Isn’t the title character about my age?” I recall her asking. After numerous
discussions I settled on “later” as the age when I thought she would be better
able to deal with the mature contents of the book. I realise that my Betsy is
her Lolita.
As
parents we often decide what our children can and cannot read, motivated by the
desire to protect their innocence, shield them from harsh realities, and limit
their exposure to controversial religious and cultural issues. These intentions
are not dissimilar to the rationale used by authority figures throughout
history in their attempt to sway public opinion, suppress dissent, and
perpetuate ideology. This is true even of the world prior to 1440 AD, when
Gutenberg invented the printing press.
History of Censorship
Historically,
religious and cultural disagreements have driven emperors, religious leaders,
and members of the ruling class to curtail readership. Greek thinker
Protagoras’ works were burned in the 5th century because he was agnostic. Roman
Emperor Diocletian ordered the burning of Christian works and, during the Qin
Dynasty (213-206 BC) in China, history books were burned and hundreds of
Confucian scholars were buried alive for their ideological differences with the
rulers.
According
to University of California, San Diego, Professor of Communication and Science
Studies, Chandra Mukerji, censorship was used during the Reformation in Europe
as a tactic “to control poor people from thinking about issues that threatened
elites.” As the Western world became more and more literate, new ideas and
thoughts began to find their way to the printed page. “Political person-hood,”
Mukerji emphasizes, “was shaped and molded because of “access to books.”
Indeed,
a large portion of our intellectual heritage comes from books, art, movies,
artifacts, and word-of-mouth stories and anecdotes. They provide shades to our
concepts, outlines to our ideas, and color to our thoughts. Yet, countries,
states and governments exercise censorship, some more violently than others.
India and its Great Soul
The
holy cows of religion and patriotism have usually driven censorship efforts in
India. Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses was banned for its supposed attacks
on Islam. Books on Shivaji have drawn the ire of activists who cherished the
hagiographic memories of the Maharashtrian warrior king. More recently, a
biography of Dhirubhai Ambani (the business magnate who founded Reliance
Industries) termed The Polyester Prince, came under fire.
The
latest controversy has been over Joseph Lelyveld’s book, Great Soul — Mahatma
Gandhi and his struggle with India. The Pulitzer prize-winning author
highlights Gandhi’s “erotically charged friendship” with a German-Jewish
architect named Herman Kallenbach.
The
Chief Minister of Gujarat, Narendra Modi, denounced the book, stating, “The
perversion shown in the writings not only deserves to be condemned in the
strongest possible terms but cannot be tolerated. I know that the members of
this august house share my feelings.” He was referring to the Gujarat State
Assembly, which summarily banned the “publication, printing and publication” of
the book in Gujarat, even though the book had not been released in India as yet
and had most likely not been read by its denouncers.
The
author, Lelyveld, “damns Gandhi not with direct attacks but with an overdose of
scepticism,” reprimands Rajmohan Gandhi, grandson of Mohandas Gandhi, in his
Hindustan Times essay of March 30, 2011, yet also submitting that it is a
mistake to ban the book, especially “in the light of Gandhi’s commitment to
freedom of speech.”
Columnist
and peace activist, Praful Bidwai, criticizes India’s “knee-jerk instinct to
prohibit, ban, punish and censor,” calling it a “huge flaw in India’s
democracy.”
Restraining Rhetoric
Since
the British era, several Indian writers have faced the wrath of authority. The
great Hindi writer and social thinker, Premchand, came under literary scrutiny
in 1910, when the British government banned his collection of short stories,
Soz-e-Watan, claiming it was seditious in content. The book consisted of five
stories that sought to inspire patriotism and political freedom.
Even
though Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s government banned The Satanic Verses,
Gandhi said that the ban “did not detract from the literary and artistic merit
of Rushdie’s work.” To which, Rushdie retorted acerbically in an open letter to
the Prime Minister, “thanks for the good review.”
In
2010, the Shiv Sena, a fundamentalist regional party, coerced Bombay
University’s Vice Chancellor, Rajan Weluka, into removing Canadian-Indian
writer Rohinton Mistry’s Such a Long Journey, from the University’s literary
curriculum. The reason given: it contained some derogatory comments about Shiv
Sena and its leader, Bal Thackeray.
“I
just don’t understand the secularism practised in India,” argues Belgian writer
Koenraad Elst, saying that these so-called secularists “arrogate the right to
decide for others what they can see and read, and what not.”
The United States’ Challenge
In
the United States, Sept 24 to Oct 1, 2011, has been designated the Banned Books
Week. This yearly event celebrates the freedom to read and, during this
commemorative period, libraries and book stores put together a display of books
that have been “challenged,” according to Los Altos Teen Services Librarian,
Sarah Neeri, who adds that, “a lot of books that are challenged are children’s
books.” “Challenge” is the new politically judicious word for censorship. There
have been 4659 challenges reported, according to the American Library
Association (ALA) website and about 48% of these challenges were initiated by
parents.
On
occasion, though, the rationale is stupefying. Consider Shel Silverstein’s
lighthearted poem, A Light in the Attic, which was banned in 1985 in Cunningham
Elementary School in Wisconsin. The official ALA records indicate that this is
because it “encourages children to break dishes so they won’t have to dry
them.” Could the fact that Silverstein’s prior profession as a Playboy
cartoonist have had anything to do with the edict, I wonder.
“Well,
I do hope they don’t provide sex books to young children. That’s all I ask,”
says Althea Anderson, a diminutive woman with a big smile who works as a
volunteer at the Friends of Palo Alto Bookstore.
Menlo
Park Kepler’s bookstore employee, Amis Maldonado, dismisses the issue of book
banning as “really irrelevant.” Then after a few moments of consideration, “If
I were to think of any books that should be on the list, I’d say the one that
describes how to be a safe paedophile. It created some controversy on Amazon.”
The book Maldonado refers to is a self-published book,
titled, The Pedophile’s Guide to Love and Pleasure: A Child-Lover’s Code of
Conduct by Phillip R. Greaves II, which was made available on Oct 28, 2010. I
did a quick search for the title and found that Amazon has since removed it
from its database.
Suruchi,
a high school junior, shakes her head at my question of whether any book should
be censored, “Reading a banned book is cool but why should books be banned,
even if they have inappropriate content? It’s a question of freedom of speech,
not morals and values.”
At
the library, an older gentleman proceeds to tell me about the book Hit Man,
published by Paladin Press in 1983. “All existing copies of the book with the
publisher were destroyed since it described how to become a hit man; a contract
killer. I have a copy of the book,” he tells me excitedly, refusing to divulge
his name, for obvious reasons!
The
book Hit Man became a paperback guide to an actual triple murder in 1993,
leading to a lawsuit. But despite that, Googling the book, leads me to these
words, “This file has been stored on the publisher’s virtual drive on
4shared.com (online file storage service). The file is shared for public access
and downloading. The publisher is responsible for the content of the file.”
“Book
censorship is not really effective,” affirms Mukerji, “and even more so now
because of the Internet. Banning books often makes people more interested in
them, and affects publishers more than readers.”
My
9th grader, Prianca, concurs with Mukerji: “If a book is banned I’m more
compelled to read it for its forbidden value.”
Nasrin
Jafarey, owner of Books N Bits in Cerritos, contends that as a bookseller she
doesn’t take sides in this debate. “It’s a business,” she says, “and I’m a
practical person,” explaining that if there are books that people want to read,
she is happy to supply them. “As a mother, though,” Jafarey muses, “There are
books that should be banned for kids.” Though, when pressed for names of these
books, she demurs, saying she cannot recall the titles or the authors. This
exposes the nebulous fear that censorship exploits—our belief that there are
some materials that go beyond the pale. But since where that line is drawn is
so subjective, it questions the very foundations of free speech.
A Distinguished List
Many
august writers have made it to the banned list in the United States: Harper
Lee, William Faulkner, Joseph Heller, Aldous Huxley, John Steinbeck, Walt
Whitman, J.D. Salinger, William Shakespeare, and even the wildly successful
J.K. Rowling, whose Harry Potter series has been challenged or banned in
several states because it allegedly “promoted witchcraft!”
A
number of Nobel Prize winning authors have faced censure from their countries
or people for their views: Turkish Orhan Pamuk, South African Nadine Gordimer,
Egyptian Naguib Mahfouz, Chinese Gao Xingjian and Polish Wisawa Szymborska.
In
Ray Bradbury’s brilliant, futuristic book, Fahrenheit 451, published in 1953,
society is controlled by censorship. The title refers to the supposed
temperature at which a book disintegrates. Fahrenheit 451 describes an
anti-intellectual climate where academics and erudition are anathematic and
accursed (harbinger of today’s political climate?)
In
a supremely ironic turn of events, Fahrenheit 451 was itself banned and
censored for containing the words, “damn,” and “hell.” An incensed Bradbury
wrote a scathing criticism in a published coda to Fahrenheit 451. “In sum, do not
insult me with the beheadings, finger-choppings or the lung-deflations you plan
for my works. I need my head to shake or nod, my hand to wave or make into a
fist, my lungs to shout or whisper with. I will not go gently onto a shelf,
degutted, to become a non-book.”
Why are Books Banned?
In
the United States, books are usually removed from shelves because the contents
are considered lewd, indecent, or obscene—Fanny Hill, Lady Chatterley’s Lover,
Lolita. Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer was banned in the United States for
almost three decades starting in 1930 for explicit sexual content. Ulysses by
James Joyce was also banned temporarily for its sexual content. The issue went
to court and the ban was overturned in 1933 in a landmark case, United States v
One Book Called Ulysses.
During
times of war, national interest and security become barometers of judgement.
Operation Dark Heart, written by Anthony Shaffer, was banned in the United
States in 2010 because it contained compromising classified information. Uncle
Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe was prohibited in the South during the
Civil War for promoting anti-slavery sentiment. More recently, Bradley
Manning’s incarceration for leaking classified government documents has made
him a cause celebré for anti-censorship activists.
But if authority can seek to censor ideas, people power can
successfully reverse the suppression. Librarians, teachers, booksellers, and
members of the community have fought to restore banned or challenged books to
shelves. Never has the effort been more inspiring than at the Tahrir Square
Book Fair, held in early April, after the peaceful revolutions in the Arab
world. “Everyone around the globe now associates Tahrir Square with freedom and
revolution,” proclaimed Trevor Naylor of the American University, one of the
organizers of the book fair, stating that the book fair “celebrates what
happened here.” In Tunisia too, with the ousting of President Zine al-Abidine
Ben Ali, books that were previously banned are now openly on sale in bookshops.
Each suppressed title now on view adds a freedom stripe to the sleeves of
democracy.
When
authoritarian regimes ban books it’s often a validation of an author’s
influence, a writer’s rite of passage. It is when democratic countries stifle
opinion that there is a breakdown in the equipoise of the governing process.
Censorship is assuredly an action that negates debate. Difference of opinion is
neither a cause nor a criterion for elimination. It is just a convenient way
out of intellectual engagement. If we remove displeasing ideas, motives, and
morals from our vocabulary are we not creating prototypes of conformity?
I
heard novelist Ayelet Waldman on the radio, recently, talking about her book,
Bad Mother. This is the same author who wrote a revelatory and famously
criticised essay titled, Truly, Madly, Guiltily in the New York Times, in which
she declared that she desired her husband’s company more than that of her
children, confessing that it is not her children but her husband’s face “that
inspires in me paroxysms of infatuated devotion.” I admit, I was startled yet
taken by both Waldman’s essay and the premise of her book, just as I am with
Amy Chua’s Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. Both authors test my slant and
persuasion. But in everything that I don’t believe, there’s an analysis I’ve
missed, a truth I’ve glossed over, or a stereotype I’ve succumbed to.
As
I write this article, I realize that the time may have come to loosen a few
parental strictures; it’s time to help my children discover and learn the moral
responsibilities of freedom. Armed with a copy of Lolita, I approach my
daughter’s door, framing the words to a singular teachable moment. - India Currents, Jun e 2, 2011
Hypocrisy in the Arab World
An
Arab bookshop in Geneva has capitalized on literary proscription by selling
banned Arabic books. Zaytouna Arabic Bookshop’s owner, Alain Bittar, was quoted
in Gulf News as saying that his clientele consists of Arab leaders, government
officials and royalty, eager to purchase books that are not available in their
countries. Bittar offers an anecdote of a royal personage calling him and
asking whether he had any books that were banned in her country. Upon his
affirmative response, he was asked to put all of them in a bag and wait for her
driver to collect them.
Suppression in China
Within
China, Falun Gong literature has been systematically destroyed and several
authors who’ve given voice to civic unhappiness have found themselves behind
bars.
Nobel
Laureate Liu Xiaobo, Ran Yunfei and countless others are currently in prison
for voicing their thoughts, while the citizens of the world watch, mute and
helpless.
Articles,
stories, poems, readings and even references to and on Tibet appear to be a red
flag to the Chinese government. When Adrienne Mong, NBC News producer, moved to
Beijing, Chinese customs impounded her books on Tibet. In her blog, she wrote,
“A few days after my books finally arrived in China, the shipping agent sent an
email, “Please be kindly advised there is a book named Tibet which is
confiscated by customs when they are inspecting your books within your
shipment. As they thought the content of the book break one China’s principle
(sic).”
A
Chinese American Santa Clara physician, who requested anonymity, states
plainly, “they (the Chinese government) don’t want to hear different voices.”
He stresses that most Chinese living in China have the same views that he does.
“They talk about it, make jokes about the government and relate stories about corruption,
within their own private worlds.”
The Flight of Taslima Nasreen
The
very act of banning can make a decent writer a high priest of literature. Take
the case of Taslima Nasreen, an anesthesiologist-turned-author. Her novel
Lajja, revolving around the revenge rape of a young Hindu girl in the backlash
against the Babri Masjid demolition in India, created such an uproar in
Bangladesh that she was forced to flee to India.
Despite
questionable literary merit, Nasreen received several awards for her work and
even published a self-indulgent memoir about her sexual experiences.
Eventually, growing opposition to her anti-religious views forced her into
exile from India. Today, she lives in Sweden and works to build support for
secular humanism, freedom of thought, equality for women, and human rights.
Book Banning in Iran
San
Carlos resident Mozhi Habibi is an active member of the Association of Iranian
American Writers (iranianamericanwriters.org), which raises funds to support authors that are banned or
jailed in Iran. According to Habibi, banning in Iran follows no real pattern,
and can be broadly applied to “anything that smells of western culture, sex,
female empowerment, non-religious ideas, revolutionary ideas, democracy,
separation of religion and politics regardless of the country of origin of the
author.” Habibi discloses that there are ways to get around the ban. “You just
have to know which book store to go to and it is usually ‘in the back.’” - India Currents, June 2, 2011
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