Wendy Doniger reports that Penguin’s failure to continue defending her book has caused it to…become much more popular than it was.

What is new, and heartening, this time is that the best are suddenly full of passionate intensity. The dormant liberal conscience of India was awakened by the stunning blow to freedom of speech that had been dealt by my publisher in giving in to the demands of the claimants, agreeing to take the book out of circulation and pulp all remaining copies.

I think the ugliness of the word “pulp” is what struck a nerve, conjuring up memories of “Fahrenheit 451” and Germany in the 1930s. The outrage had been pent up for many years, as other books, films,

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So about that lawsuit – check it out.

It starts with “Yo, my client is an educationist, and he happened on your book, and he knows you’ve written other books, yo.”

4.       That my client has read the book authored by you namely the Hindus: An Alternative History. That after reading the book my client found it to be a shallow, distorted and non serious presentation of Hinduism. That it is a haphazard presentation riddled with heresies and factual inaccuracies.

AND THAT IS AGAINST THE LAW HOW DARE YOU.

5.       That after reading the said book my client is of the opinion my client states that the aforesaid book is written with a Christian Missionary Zeal and hidden agenda

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A fabulously useful resource from South Asia Citizens Web: a list of responses to Penguin’s withdrawal of Wendy Doniger’s book in India, with many quoted in full.

The Indian Express February 12

…

Prominent sections of the establishment in India have long abdicated their commitment to a defence of the written word, forsaking the liberal strategy of allowing a text to be contested legally — and legally alone — on whatever grouse, and instead even abetting intimidation as a tool for bringing censorship. It is to India’s shame that it was the first country to ban Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses. Since then, through the vandalisation that hounded a scholarly biography of Shivaji out of circulation, the message has

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Statement by PEN Delhi:

From members of the PEN All-India Centre in Mumbai and the PEN Delhi Centre:

PEN’s India Centres in Delhi and Mumbai are deeply concerned about the reported decision by Penguin India to withdraw Wendy Doniger’s scholarly book, The Hindus: An Alternative History. Choosing to settle the matter out of court, instead of challenging an adverse judgment, narrows India’s intellectual discourse and significantly undermines freedom of expression.

We do not know why Penguin took the decision and expect the publisher to be transparent about the circumstances in which it made the decision, which comes at a time when Indian publishers have faced waves of threats from litigants, vigilante groups, and politicians. Siddharth Deb’s “The Beautiful and

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One thing that’s incredibly, tragically ironic about Penguin’s (forced) submission in the case of Doniger’s book is that it was Penguin that fought back when David Irving tried to force it to withdraw and pulp Deborah Lipstadt’s book. The title of the case is David Irving v Penguin Books and Deborah Lipstadt. Penguin fought, Penguin spent a fortune, and Penguin won.

Vijay Prashad gives some background on Doniger’s work.

Doniger, a professor of the history of religions at the University of Chicago, is no stranger to this kind of controversy. Her studies of Hinduism have sought to recover the buried, heterodox Tantric tradition from under the weight of the orientalist’s favourite form of Hinduism – Vedanta. For European

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Nilanjana Bhowmick at the Time website explains why Dinanath Batra has bullied Penguin into recalling and destroying Doniger’s book.

First of all, she makes a factual claim that I hadn’t seen before.

Penguin Books India has agreed to recall and pulp all copies in India of The Hindus: An Alternative History by U.S. scholar Wendy Doniger, raising concerns over freedom of expression in the world’s largest democracy.

Only in India? I thought it was all copies, period.

The move by one of India’s major book publishers is a settlement with members of the Hindu group Shiksha Bachao Andolan, which has filed civil and criminal cases over the work.

In a conversation with TIME, Shiksha Bachao Andolan president Dinanath Batra explains

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Salil Tripathi gives his view.

Last night I asked Doniger what she thought about her publisher’s decision. Deeply concerned, she told me: “Penguin has indeed given up the lawsuit, and will no longer publish the book. Of course, anyone with a computer can get the Kindle edition from Penguin, NY, and it’s probably cheaper, too. It is simply no longer possible to ban books in the age of the Internet. For that, and for all the people who have expressed outrage over this, I am deeply grateful.”

I also asked Penguin for its response. At the time of writing, Chiki Sarkar, Penguin’s publisher, had not replied.

…
Those who disagreed with Doniger had options—to protest, to argue, to

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Here’s the petition to Penguin to “withdraw” Doniger’s book and to apologize.

The following is a petition from concerned signatories to the Penguin Group asking for an apology for the publication of the factually incorrect and offensive book The Hindus-An Alternative History by Wendy Doniger. We expect Penguin Group to withdraw the book immediately.

The Hindus: An Alternative History is rife with numerous errors in itshistorical facts and Sanskrit translations. These errors and misrepresentations are bound and perhaps intended to mislead students of Indian and Hindu history.

Throughout the book, Doniger analyzes revered Hindu Gods and Goddess using her widely discredited psychosexual Freudian theories that modern,humanistic psychology has deemed limiting. These interpretations arepresented as hard facts and not as speculations.

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The BBC reports on Penguin’s decision to destroy all remaining hard copies of Wendy Doniger’s book The Hindus: an Alternative History.

Penguin India has agreed to recall and destroy all remaining copies of a book on Hinduism by a leading American academic, according to reports.

Wendy Doniger’s book The Hindus: An Alternative History had been the subject of a legal challenge claiming the text was offensive to Hindus.

Details of an apparent agreement between the Hindu campaign group Shiksha Bachao Andolan and Penguin India have been circulated online.

Penguin India has not yet commented.

Shiksha Bachao Andolan brought a civil case in 2011 against Penguin India arguing that the book was insulting to Hindus, containing what they described as

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