T C A Srinivasa-Raghavan: Damned if you publish - or don't

In the late 1970s, I was working for Macmillan India as their economics editor and a part of my duties comprised assessing whether to import in bulk, for a reduced price, titles from the parent company, Macmillan Press, in the United Kingdom. One day I received a query from London whether we would consider buying 300 copies of a book they were publishing shortly. It was called The Downfall of Capitalism and Communism.

I wrote back saying that since in India we had neither, the book would not sell in large quantities. The reply came that the author was Indian so the book might sell at least 10 times as much - which, by the way, gives you an idea of the size of the market for serious books those days.

I was asked by my boss to find out more about the author, Ravi Batra. So I asked some friends at the Delhi School of Economics. They said he was an excellent economist but that he held some odd political views and to be careful.

It turned out that Dr Batra was persuaded to a considerable extent by the theories of P R Sarkar, the founder of Anand Marg. This would not have mattered much except that in the 1970s various Indian governments were very allergic to the Anand Marg. In 1975, during the Emergency, the Anand Marg had even been banned by the government.

Although a new government was in office, we didn't want the book to be held up for years at customs while they referred it to the home ministry. The payments to Macmillan Press would have to be made within three months regardless.

So since I knew someone senior in the home ministry, I asked him to read the proof copy. He told me that at least as far as he was concerned, the book was fine.

But, he warned, since you could never really tell with politicians, it might be a good idea to get formal approval and that is what was done.

Three hundred copies came in afterwards at a very low price and about half were sold. Very little money was made on the deal.

This long-winded preamble was necessary because publishing, like the film industry, is a high-risk business where only one in a hundred titles makes any real money. More than half lose money and the rest just about break even.

Academic publishing is not an exception. An academic book of the sort where merely 500 or 1,000 copies are printed just isn't worth the bother of trying to rebuild shattered showrooms and replacing damaged stock. Discretion is always the better part of liberal valour.

The decisions by Penguin and Orient BlackSwan, therefore, have to be seen in this light alone. These firms are not here to protect Article 19. That's the job of the government and the courts.

Can governments be blamed? Yes, they can and must be blamed. They have to, simply must have to, provide the environment where illiterate goons are not allowed to bully anyone, not just publishers.

So should the political parties that offer protection to these goons. All too often, they tend to claim innocence because their guilt can't be proved. They take refuge behind the old dictum that mere knowledge isn't proof. The Bharatiya Janata Party, more than anyone else, is guilty of this subterfuge.

Is the law - Section 295 of the Indian Penal Code - needed? Absolutely, because if every law that was misused was struck off, we'd be left with very few laws.

The intention to harm that it requires to be proved must be proved in a court. Chances are high that the charge - that the author meant to cause harm, injury, etc - would never stick.

In that sense Mr Batra did adopt the course. He took the legal route and the publishers should have waited for the court to rule. Instead, like governments the world over, they took fright. The revenue to be garnered was simply too small for foolhardy courage.

That said, can we fault Mr Batra? Indeed we can, and must, because he suffers from what in Hindi is called a sankeerna drishtikon, or a narrow mind. His approach is completely antithetical to Hinduism, which he seeks to protect. A few insulting words in some obscure English books are not going to harm it.

Finally, do groups of foolish people in other countries protest against books? They do. Do other countries ban books? You can look up the list here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_books_banned_by_governments.