The debate over publishing house Penguin's withdrawal of a controversial book on Hinduism has largely centred round the issues of politics and ‘tolerance for secular values’. In the cacophony, the core matter has been shut out from the discussions.
The points which the petitioners, who went to the court against the book, and a bunch of online protestors who wrote to the Penguin offices in the US and India, raised, have been missing from the discourse. To contemptuously dismiss them is as wrong as the withdrawal of the book, and shows similar intolerance as in the latter case.
But before we get to them, let us bring certain facts on record. The first is that no Government authority has banned the book. The second is that the publishing house has withdrawn the book from the Indian market as part of an agreement which it reached with the Delhi-based petitioner, Shiksha Bachao Andolan, out of the Delhi High Court. The third is that no ‘Hindu' organisation has violently agitated against the book or issued fatwas against the author. The fourth is that the withdrawal has got nothing to do with the surge of the BJP and Narendra Modi in the run-up to the lok Sabha election.
Writer-turned-social activist and the country's self-appointed conscience-keeper Arundhati Roy has in an open letter to Penguin, drawn a linkage between the withdrawal and the rise of the ‘fascists’. She said, “The elections are still a few months away. The fascists are, thus far, only campaigning. Yes, it's looking bad, but they are not in power. Not yet. And you've already succumbedIJ” She forgets that the ‘fascist' forces have been in power in many States since the last decade and more, and none of them has either banned the book or launched a hate campaign against the publisher and the author.
She and others of her kind can lament to their heart's content that the country's laws are the real culprits since they allow for the intimidation of writers and publishers. Perhaps she too believes despite knowing better, like Doniger does out of sheer ignorance, that the laws are biased in favour of the Hindus. In any case, she has never had much respect for law, going by the way she has backed the Maoists and their campaign for change through the power of the gun. She and those others seem to forget that the very laws they trash allow them the freedom to spew venom. In a less tolerant society and legal system, she would have been behind bars long ago.
Now, let's look at some of the issues that the petitioners against Wendy Doniger's The Hindus: An alternative History, now recalled from the market, have flagged. Many of these are factual in nature, and some have hurt the sentiments of the Hindu community. But we’ll be on the facts.
On page 552 of the book, Doniger claims that Tulsidas composed Ramcharitmanas in Varanasi. She writes, “The Brahmins of Varanasi, where the text was composed, are said to have been shocked by the composition of a text in a vernacular language.” It is well established that Tulsidas composed the epic in Ayodhya. The slip-up may seem to be a minor one concerning a place, but given that Doniger was writing a scholarly account of Hinduism, and that too an ‘alternative history', the error seriously dents the book's credibility.
The petitioners also latched on to a description the author, citing early (Rig Vedic) sources, gives on page 112 of the eating habits of the Vedic people. “The usual meal of milk, ghee (clarified butter), vegetables, fruit, wheat, and barley would be supplemented by the flesh of cattle…” The petitioners pointed out that wheat had never been mentioned in the Rig Veda and that the first mention came only in the later Yajur Veda. It is clear that Doniger was not being careful with her research.
To top it all, is the author's contention that the population in the ancient Indus Valley Civilisation (the Harappan culture, really) was “as many as forty thousand”. She footnotes a source here, but is clearly wrong, according to her critics. The figure of 40,000 would refer to the population of Mohenjo-Daro alone; the entire ancient civilisation comprised around five lakh people, by most established estimates.
But that is not the end. At a footnote on page 194, Doniger refers to one of Mahatma Gandhi's essays on the Bhagvad Gita, the title of which she gives to mean as ‘Asakti Yoga' (science of deep attachment), when in fact it should have been ‘Anasakti Yoga' (science of deep non-attachment or detachment). How could the author have been so careless in a book that is supposed to be a scholarly account of a religion — and that too an alternative history of the world's oldest religionIJ
There are also many errors of date that the petitioners have pointed out, such as those concerning Kabir, Muhammad bin Qasim, Akbar and Mirabai. These are unpardonable in a book authored by a scholar who holds two doctorates in Sanskrit and Indian studies from the universities of Oxford and Harvard, has translated several works from Sanskrit, taught at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of london, and is considered a world authority on Hinduism.
Interestingly, neither the publisher nor the author, since the time an organisation, the Sarasvati Research Trust, demanded the book's withdrawal through its online campaign in 2010, and since the time they were challenged in the courts, bothered to come clean on what amounts to alleged factual errors, or meaningfully dispute the claims their critics had made. The fact that Penguin has now ‘succumbed' may have more to do with its weak position vis-a-vis these factors than with the presence of a hidden arm-twister and prejudiced laws.
It must be mentioned here for the benefit of those who see the hand of ‘Hindutva' in the withdrawal of the book that in none of the above instances do the arguments go beyond facts of history and documented material. Of course, the petitioners, both online and in the court, had also raised the matter of hurt to Hindu sensitivities, but these were complementary, not exclusive, to the factual inaccuracies they referred to with special vehemence.
In all fairness, thus, the debate should have centered round these contentious issues. Noted experts in Hindu religion, archaeology and history ought to have deliberated and contested on television channels the points the petitioners had raised. Sadly, we have seen none of this.
But, does all this mean that Penguin's action of withdrawing Doniger's book was in principle appropriateIJ No, it wasn't, also because it has given the book, and its author, further respectability. It has provided a handle to the ‘secularists' to go Hindu-bashing yet again.