Since I last rounded up reactions to Penguin India's shocking decision to settle out of court and agree to recall and pulp Wendy Doniger's The Hindus: An Alternative History there has been a lot more coverage and commentary.
Penguin India finally issued an official statement on the whole mess -- unfortunately a pretty muddled one. On the one hand they blame the law -- "the Indian Penal Code, and in particular section 295A of that code" -- but instead of challenging the law in actual court proceedings they elected to settle out of court -- not exactly a way of taking any sort of stand or sending any sort of message. (And if it's a bad law which they believe: "will make it increasingly difficult for any Indian publisher to uphold international standards of free expression without deliberately placing itself outside the law" ('increasingly' ? why 'increasingly' ?) why haven't they been lobbying/supporting efforts to get it changed ?)
On the other hand Penguin also claim that they have: "a moral responsibility to protect our employees against threats and harassment where we can". (As to their moral responsibility regarding their authors and freedom of speech -- surely the basic civic duty that all publishers have -- those apparently don't count for much any more.) That the responsibility for protecting their employees against threats and harassment is something that should be a matter for the law, too -- and the state -- also goes unmentioned -- and while it's perhaps understandable that Penguin India has little faith in the Indian authorities they should still certainly point this out.
At dna Aarti Sethi and Shuddhabrata Sengupta wonder Is big publishing abandoning the fight for free expression ? noting that:
Penguin India finally issued an official statement on the whole mess -- unfortunately a pretty muddled one. On the one hand they blame the law -- "the Indian Penal Code, and in particular section 295A of that code" -- but instead of challenging the law in actual court proceedings they elected to settle out of court -- not exactly a way of taking any sort of stand or sending any sort of message. (And if it's a bad law which they believe: "will make it increasingly difficult for any Indian publisher to uphold international standards of free expression without deliberately placing itself outside the law" ('increasingly' ? why 'increasingly' ?) why haven't they been lobbying/supporting efforts to get it changed ?)
On the other hand Penguin also claim that they have: "a moral responsibility to protect our employees against threats and harassment where we can". (As to their moral responsibility regarding their authors and freedom of speech -- surely the basic civic duty that all publishers have -- those apparently don't count for much any more.) That the responsibility for protecting their employees against threats and harassment is something that should be a matter for the law, too -- and the state -- also goes unmentioned -- and while it's perhaps understandable that Penguin India has little faith in the Indian authorities they should still certainly point this out.
At dna Aarti Sethi and Shuddhabrata Sengupta wonder Is big publishing abandoning the fight for free expression ? noting that:
Chiki Sarkar, publisher at Penguin India has gone on record (in October 2012, on Nilanjana Roy's blog) saying -- "I am increasingly thinking that perhaps we should take the next injunction we are faced with and really fight it out". What happened between October 2012 and February 2014, that made this admirable determination to fight for freedom of expression turn into an abject surrender before its adversaries, is a mystery to us.Arundhati Roy, a Penguin author, wrote an open letter to Penguin, demanding an explanation -- and other Penguin authors have already gone one step further, with Jyotirmaya Sharma and Siddharth Varadarajan impressively going so far as to demand Penguin withdraw and pulp their books. As quoted in the Times of India report, Two Penguin authors want their books withdrawn, pulped, Sharma also wrote them:
If my request is overlooked or dismissed citing arguments from the contract I have signed with Penguin, I will, then, resort to legal recourse, especially since I believe that my books published by you are grave threats to Indian law as interpreted by you and to the safety of your colleagues and employeeWell done ! (And I hope that every Penguin Random House author -- not just in India -- has contacted their editor(s) to inquire just how far the publisher will support them and their books should these be challenged somewhere. (Sure, this happened in India -- but don't believe a variation on this can't happen here (wherever your 'here' is).))