Infringement of Academic Freedom in India

H-Asia Infringement of Academic Freedom in India

Discussion published by PROJIT B MUKHARJI on Wednesday, June 18, 2014

Dear Colleagues,

I am writing to draw your attention to a new attack upon academic freedom in India. Dinanath Batra, an RSS activist, fresh from his success at getting Wendy Doniger’s book removed from Indian bookshops, has now turned his attention to Sekhar Bandyopadhyay’s excellent textbook on modern South Asian history, From Plassey to Partition.

You can follow the developments at any of the following links:- http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/another-publisher-forced-to-censor-textbooks/article6075864 .ece?homepage=true http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/36024216.cms?intenttarget=no http://www.firstpost.com/living/children-of-marx-macaulay-are-defaming-hinduism-dinanath-batra-155 9083.html

Besides issuing legal notices and initiating “civil and criminal proceedings”, an editorial in the RSS mouthpiece, The Organizer, also mentioned that Mr Batra would begin “an agitation against the book” unless the passages he objected to were removed from the BA 3rd Year History syllabus. Here is the link to the piece in The Organizer:- http://organiser.org/Encyc/2014/4/19/Legal-notice-to-Orient-Black-Swan-for-spreading-canard-against -RSS.aspx?NB&lang=3&m1&m2&p1&p2&p3&p4

In this regard, its worth pointing out that whilst Mr Batra's supporters insist that by following legal options of dissent he is himself excercising his democratic rights, the threat of 'agitation', irrespective of the legal outcome, makes such claims ring hollow.

Moreover, what we are seeing in each case is that publishers--fearing perhaps both the 'agitation' and the protracted legal costs--are choosing to settle out of court. This means that the law of the land is in effect not deciding the issue.

This last point is further borne out in a report in The Hindu today which points to the publisher's lawyer, perhaps opting to play it safe and avoid litigation, recommending changes in books even when they are historically accurate and the strict legal precedent somewhat ambiguous. http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/revise-your-book-orient-blackswan-tells-megha-kumar/...

It is disconcerting that these infringements of academic freedom are becoming a pattern and that at the end of the day it is neither the law nor any democratic process, but rather a vocal and politically savvy minority and risk-averse publishers that are deciding upon the limits of academic freedom.

Citation: PROJIT B MUKHARJI. Infringement of Academic Freedom in India. H-Asia. 06-18-2014. https://networks.h-net.org/node/22055/discussions/31127/infringement-academic-freedom-india Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. 1 H-Asia

Since much of the mainstream media remains reticent to cover any of this, as academics it is upto us to start a larger debate about who should decide on the limits of academic free speech in India.

Projit Bihari Mukharji

Assistant Professor,

University of Pennsylvania.