The “Modi” turn of Indian letters: between censorship and sensitivity

Poster of the 2022 Paris Book Festival. © SNE

Text by: Tirthankar Chanda Follow

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Indian literature is in the spotlight at the Paris Book Festival, which opens its doors to the general public this Friday, April 22.

Thirty Indian authors will take part in this event.

This is an opportunity to discover the richness of Indian letters, but perhaps also the difficulties encountered by writers from this country to write and publish freely in an India where the Hindu fundamentalists in power abuse freedom of expression and reviews.

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Modern India has a long history of 

.

The practice dates back to the days of British colonization.

Under the colonial regime, which lasted nearly two hundred years, books were withdrawn from sale, mainly for political reasons.

Ananda Math

, a nationalist novel by the great Bengali writer Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, was one of India's first literary works to be censored.

Published in 1882, translated into French under the title

, this book which made hear for the first time the cry

 ("Hail to Mother India"), a patriotic song taken up on its own by the Indian nationalist movement, was banned by the colonial regime.

It was not until independence that this ban was finally lifted and

 adopted as the national anthem.

Among the other works that fell under the sedition law introduced by the British, mention should be made of

, by the Urdu-speaking author, Premchand, a pioneer of modern Indian letters.

One morning in 1909, on the order of the

, the police went to the author's house to recover the copies of the offending work.

The 500 copies seized were burned and the author forbade the publication of new books without the authorization of the colonial administration.

According to the story, the writer will circumvent the diktat by now calling himself by his pseudonym “Premchand”, in order to be able to continue writing.

After India's independence in 1947, the blacklisting of literary works continued, as

spoke out publicly against the practice of censorship which, according to this Prime Minister, founding father of the Modern India, did no honor to a civilized society.

Paradoxically, it was under Nehru's long reign that the Indian Supreme Court prohibited the marketing in India of the famous English novel

, deemed obscene by the Indian courts.

Remember that this "historic" judgment was pronounced in 1964, 31 years after the publication of the novel in England.

For Indian Prime Minister Nehru, censorship did no honor to a civilized society.

In the photo, Jawaharlal Nehru delivers his famous speech "Tryst with Destiny", on August 15, 1947, in parliament in New Delhi, on the occasion of the proclamation of the country's independence.

STR / PRESS INFORMATION BUREAU / AFP

“

”

Coming into force in 1950, the Indian Constitution nevertheless enshrines the right to express oneself freely, to contest, to criticize.

But this freedom of expression is conditioned by considerations of state security, public order, decency and morality, and other restrictions, including offense to religious feelings.

These restrictions are specified in the second paragraph of article 19 of the Constitution devoted to freedom of expression.

"

", recalls Laetitia Zecchini, specialist in contemporary Indian literature and affiliated with the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS ).

The researcher calls India a “

,” referring to Amendments 295A and 298 of the Indian Penal Code which legalizes censorship of literary and artistic works on the basis of religious offense.

“

, explains the academic,

'hurt'

'deliberate'

'ill-intentioned' ways”.

Muslims demonstrate in protest against Rushdie's visit to the Book Fair in Jaipur, India.

©Reuters.

In 1988, a milestone in the history of literary censorship in India, it was in the name of outrage to religious feelings that

by Salman Rushdie was banned in Indian territory.

The India of

Nehru's grandson, was the first country to ban Rushdie's novel under pressure from the Muslim clergy on whom Congress depended to keep its grip on the electorate community.

Even before Iran.

Moreover,

is not his only work to be censored in India.

In 1995, his novel

drew the wrath of the regionalist and far-right party, Shiv Sena, in power in the state of Maharashtra (capital Bombay), for its parody presentation of its leader Bal Thackeray.

In 2003, the Bangladeshi

, a refugee in India, will also bear the brunt of the authorities' electoralist policy, when, in the name of the wounded feelings of the Muslim community, the Communist Party in power in the Indian state of Bengal -Occidental had his books withdrawn from the market, in particular his novel

or “Tirailée en deux”.

Resurgence of complaints

With the rise of Hindu nationalism, from the 1990s, the Hindu majority has also become accustomed to asserting its "hurt feelings" to ban books that represent its religion in a light that it considers little favorable.

"

", writes Laetitia Zecchini in an article on “

” (1).

She speaks of a new "

" to alleged offenses and the " 

”.

In this context, the 2014 pounding of

by the eminent American Indian 

, is an emblematic case of censorship in India for religious reasons.

Published in 2008, this book, which aims to tell a renewed history of Hinduism from alternative sources, quickly became a bestseller in India, until an activist of the Hindu movement, the RSS, filed a complaint against its publisher, the Penguin India, accusing the author of wanting to smear the image of the Hindu religion and of having hurt the feelings of “

”.  

The affair deeply shook the Indian intelligentsia.

When, after four years of legal battles, the publisher decided in February 2014, a few months before the election of Hindu leader Narendra Modi, to have the book withdrawn from the market, the Indian novelist Arundhati Roy published in

a letter open, particularly accusatory.

She challenged the publisher to have yielded to pressure from the street.

"

" she wrote

»

The case dates back to 2010, when an obscure organization called Shiksha Bachao Andolan protested against the release of Wendy Doniger's book titled "The Hindus".

DR

The bitterness of Indian intellectuals, as shown by Roy's column, grew after the triumphant election of Narendra Modi's Hindu party to the federal parliament in April 2014. Since then, the multiplication of assassinations targeting writers, journalists have silenced number of writers or, more seriously still, to self-censorship.

Authors are afraid to write, fearing they will be targeted by Hindu activists.

Tamil novelist Perumal Murugan says no different when he proclaims that an inner censor now watches every word he writes.

In 2010, with his landmark novel

, this author aroused the ire of Hindu fundamentalists by portraying the stigma of infertility that weighs on childless women in Indian society.

Harassed, threatened, he had to give up his vocation, even announcing his death as a writer on Facebook.

Simply to be left alone!  

wishful thinking

Censorship in India today also affects the

of schools and universities.

Recently, the University of Delhi withdrew from the curriculum of literary studies texts by great Indian authors depicting the brutalities of the caste system and the fate reserved for women in a patriarchal society.

A short story from the pen of the great Bengali novelist, Mahasweta Devi, recounting the gang rape suffered by a young tribal woman in a police station, is among the texts censored, because they "

", as the Delhi University spokesperson explained.

"

," says Laetitia Zecchini.

And to wonder: “

»

The assault on democracy and its freedoms by the Modi government is now particularly aimed at the history books.

The conservative right in power in India wants to rewrite history to instil in people's minds a Hindu vision of the country, obscuring its pluralism, its multi-millennial and fruitful multiculturalism.

The last time the government wanted to change the history books was in 1977 when, for the first time since independence, the right was in charge in New Delhi, eminent Indian historian Romila Thapar recently told a journalist.

"

," recalls Thapar.

"anti-nationals"

"academic terrorists"

»

With the Hindu fundamentalists firmly in power in New Delhi this time around, hoping today that history students can quickly find their old textbooks seems like wishful thinking.

The Modi years are likely to last, undoubtedly leading to a profound change in political paradigm and imagination, observers fear.  

(1) "

”, by Laetitia Zecchini.

, 2020/1 (issue 106)

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