In 1988, Salman Rushdie’s book The Satanic Verses was banned in India. It was assumed that it would offend Muslims, and notwithstanding the fact that Muslim literacy was far below the national average, and the number of Muslims in the country who could actually read the book was very few indeed, the book was banned. In 1989 Ayatollah Khomeini, the man who, ironically, rid Iran of a tyrant, the Shah of Iran, but then went on to heap even worse indignities on the people of Iran in the form of the Islamic Revolution, proclaimed a fatwa against Rushdie, the fatwa of death for writing The Satanic Verses. A mere ban on the book wasn’t enough to bring Rushdie to heel. He must pay for writing fiction with his life.

In 2004, a mob calling itself the Sambhaji Brigade, vandalised one of the most respected institutes of learning in India, the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute (BORI), destroying many irreplaceable ancient manuscripts, a loss almost on the scale of the destruction of libraries in Sarajevo and Iraq and of the Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan, because an American scholar wrote a ‘controversial’ book on an Indian chieftain, Shivaji, in which he gratefully acknowledged the contribution of BORI in writing his book. The Indian courts subsequently banned the book, Shivaji: Hindu King in Islamic India even though almost nobody in India had read the book. There was no debate on the academic merits of the book. It was simply removed.

In the case of both The Satanic Verses and Shivaji, the ban was politically motivated, imposed in order to appease a particular section of Indian society, and of course defend God/Allah and a warrior chieftain who is almost treated like a god in parts of India. It is curious that people who believe in the overwhelming power of gods nevertheless imagine that they need this sort of protection. If Rushdie, for example, is to be punished for blasphemy, surely Allah can do it with no human intervention.

Lady Chatterley’s Lover offended the moral sensibilities of many people in the West who went to great pains to have it banned. Fortunately, the courts did not support their outraged sensibilities, and allowed the book to be published. Yet interestingly, the Indian courts imposed a ban on the unabridged version of the book, even though it had been published in several countries elsewhere.

Ban fever rages on unabated even in liberal democracies like the US. While the popular Harry Potter series has been banned by some Christian schools for containing anti-Christian themes like witchcraft and wizardry, the classic The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain has been banned for using the word ‘nigger’ amongst other reasons.

Almost all of Taslima Nasrin’s books have been banned in her country, Bangladesh. Lajja, describes the plight of minorities, particularly the Hindus, in the wake of the violence in India against Muslims in 1992 after the demolition of an ancient mosque by Hindu fundamentalists. It was one of her first books to be banned. Though a work of fiction, it has gritty scenes of violence that obviously touched a raw nerve in the Bangladesh government of the time.

The latest furore in India is over the book Such a Long Journey by Rohinton Mistry, which contains uncomplimentary references to the fuhrer of the right-wing political party, Shiv Sena, a party chiefly known for its violent and criminalised foot-soldiers and their xenophobic leader. Out of fear of the uncontrolled violence that this party is capable of, the Vice-Chancellor of Mumbai University cravenly gave in to its demand for removing this book from the syllabus. This was one of the more recent examples of how university autonomy has been compromised in independent India. State and non-state actors may share some of the blame for this, but the chief responsibility for such curtailment rests with the educationists who, time and again, have shown an absence of courage in dealing with education matters. Higher education needs men and women of courage, and such people are strangely lacking in the Indian system.

Almost any piece of writing seems able to attract a ban. There are only two conditions for imposing a ban – one, that at least one person is offended by the contents of the book, and two, that that person should have sufficient muscle to impose his writ. Once these two conditions are met, it isn’t hard to ban something. China has even managed to ban entire websites like Facebook and Google in its bid to keep its population servile and ‘innocent’. Perhaps one of the earliest known examples of a ban is in the Old Testament. God forbade Adam from eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and the moment Adam disobeyed, cursed him and all of humankind for all days to come. And yet who could honestly regret the entire breadth of knowledge that we have acquired in all the centuries that homo sapiens have existed?

The second paragraph of the Preamble of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which says ‘…and the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people,’ is obviously unknown to the promoters of bans and arbitrary censorship. Dictators, despots, tyrants, like controlling parents, take it upon themselves to control people’s minds by censoring what they are exposed to. They fail to recognise the right of people to think for themselves, to choose what they wish to read, to watch, to hear. There is no reason why people must read The Satanic Verses just as there is no reason why they must not. It is a perverse logic that inflicts the choice of one person upon another. If Rushdie’s book offends the Ayatollah, let him not read it. Why must he impose his will upon the rest of the population? He imposes his will because he can do so, because the firepower at his disposal ensures that people bend to his diktat and will not stand up and question him. The Ayatollah used his fatwa against Rushdie to thumb his nose at the West, not just one writer. The mighty Islamic Republic of Iran was able to take on the entire Western world and make it run for cover. Nothing much could be done against the Ayatollah for perpetrating this outrage, and that’s what he probably banked upon while proclaiming his fatwa.

With greater liberalisation, is the situation on banning becoming easier? On the contrary. Matters in emerging economies like India are worsening. Even with the Internet and the greater access to information that it offers, there are a number of threatening proclamations against anything deemed offensive. The middle-class, keen to acquire material and social stability when times are good, is reluctant to take up cudgels on behalf of the afflicted writer or artist or film-maker. One of the most renowned Indian painters, M F Hussain, an old man now, has been forced to live in exile in Qatar because of threats to his life by the lunatic right wing extremist party, the Shiv Sena, which was offended by his portrayal of Hindu goddesses. Much to India’s shame, the artist has accepted Qatar citizenship. The message to artists in India is loud and clear. They have to follow certain rules or be vulnerable to attacks on their person or their work. Not many people recognise the enormous threat to freedom of expression that such acts pose. And too few come forward to defend this freedom. The middle class would much rather go about its daily business than bother about an artist and his artistic freedom, be he ever so famous. This is not merely indifference, there is at times active support for the ban. Many Indians supported Shiv Sena’s view that a Muslim man had no business painting Hindu goddesses.

One of the most inalienable rights of an individual is freedom of expression. Most democratic countries include this right in their constitutions. And yet, many governments, on the pretext of preserving law and order or public peace, are quick to abrogate this right. It is the duty of all right-thinking individuals to defend this right against all attacks. Otherwise what is the difference between a democracy like India and a despotic regime like Iran? The true test of a mature democracy is one where every individual has the right to freedom of speech and expression. By this measure can Bangladesh and India really be considered mature democracies?

Unfortunately in many places in the world the right to freedom of expression is being abused to make hate speeches rather than to defend individual liberty and to protest against coercion of any kind. Humanism, with its unflinching belief in the right of every individual to freedom of expression  regardless of creed, sex or colour, is the only life-stance that can truly defend this right.