Why Ban A Book?
Does anyone care about education in India? Shiksha Bachao Andolon ('Save Education Movement') has just managed to get a book pulped - a cultural history of the Hindus written by American academic Wendy Doniger - because it 'contained factual inaccuracies'. It does not indeed matter that this was on sale since 2009, and sold well. The education of India has just been saved. Somehow, I have been preparing for book burnings in India soon and here is a good start. Indeed, there are lots of tweets mourning the passing of the book, and pointing to the fact that there are lots of people banning lots of different books in India. The most famous being Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses, which was presumed to have injured Muslim sentiments. But so is V K Naipaul's An Area of Darkness, for its critical portrayal of Indians. Salman Rushdie's other book, The Moor's Last Sigh, was also briefly banned for alleged likeness of one of the characters with Shiv Sena supr...