Penguin pulls book on Hindus after court case

Agencies/New DelhiPenguin Books India has agreed to withdraw from sale all copies of a book that takes an unorthodox view of Hinduism, and will pulp them as part of a settlement after a case was filed against the publisher, a Hindu group’s lawyer said. The Hindus: An Alternative History by Wendy Doniger, a professor at the University of Chicago’s Divinity School, was published in India in 2011. Its depiction of the religion drew criticism from both conservative Hindus and some scholars. Penguin on Monday agreed in the Saket Court in Delhi to recall the book, the group’s lawyer Monika Arora said. What appeared to be a copy of the court agreement was widely circulated on the Internet yesterday. A complaint was filed by seven petitioners in the court in 2011. Penguin did not respond to several requests for comment. The group’s original complaint criticised the book for “heresies and factual inaccuracies” and criticised Doniger for having a selective approach to writing about Hinduism. “She denounced the Hindu gods and freedom fighters of India,” the petitioners’ lawyer Arora said. The group called the Shiksha Bachao Andolan Committee headed by Dina Nath Batra has previously made complaints about diverse subjects including sex education in schools and a magazine article about Hindu militancy. The book’s withdrawal triggered anger on Twitter, rekindling a debate on freedom of speech in the world’s largest democracy. “The ‘offended’ prevail over freedom of speech. Surely gods too great to be so easily upset?” tweeted Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia director of the New York-based Human Rights Watch. It was not the first time a book has been banned in India. Rushdie’s 1988 novel The Satanic Verses, which many Muslims deemed blasphemous, is proscribed. The legal notice said Doniger was incorrect in describing the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), India’s largest Hindu nationalist organisation, which is close to the main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), as the party’s militant wing. The BJP is the frontrunner in national polls due by May. The notice also said that Doniger incorrectly tells readers the RSS was behind the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi, saying a judicial commission had exonerated the RSS of any complicity in Gandhi’s murder. Gandhi was shot dead by a former member of the organisation. Batra said: “I am happy with the settlement,” adding the book was only focused on “sex and eroticism.” Batra said Penguin wrote in the agreement that “we respect all the religions so we withdraw the book.” Batra and his organisation, a registered body with volunteers spread across 26 states, first filed a complaint against the book and then sought legal recourse.  After a civil suit, he filed a criminal case, alleging that a representation of the map of India in the book did not include the northern state of Jammu and Kashmir. Misrepresenting the map of India is a criminal offence. The blurb of the book says it is a definitive narrative account of history and myth that offers a new way of understanding one of the world’s oldest major religions. After news of the settlement broke yesterday, e-copies of the book were being widely circulated on social media in India along with links to websites where the book could be downloaded. In a separate incident last week, Hindu hardliners burned copies of a magazine because of a story in which it quotes a Hindu nationalist leader as saying that Mohan Bhagwat, who leads the RSS, had sanctioned deadly attacks on Muslims. The RSS has denied the allegations against Bhagwat.