Censorship Myths And Imagined Harms
Contesting Censorship / 447
Censorship Myths and
Imagined Harms
S H O H I N I G H O S H
“Every idea is an incitement”
- Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes
On November 28, 2003, the Left Front Government of West Bengal banned
Dwikhandita (Split in Two, 2003) by Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasrin. Chief Minister
Buddhadev Bhattacharjee said: “I’ve read the book, not once but several times. I’ve
discussed the contents with 25 people who matter and have finally decided to proscribe it”.
The Home Secretary, Amit Kiran Deb, said that if the book were not banned, “it could ignite
communal tension”.1 After conducting nightlong raids, the Calcutta police triumphantly
announced that they had seized all documentary evidence from the bookstores and pub-
lishers, including microfilms, floppies and all hard copies of the manuscript. Taslima
responded by offering to put the manuscript on the net so that interested readers could
download it and decide for themselves.
Most people would agree that, in the age of the internet, censorship could only be a
symbolic gesture. The persistent reader/viewer will always find ways of accessing pro-
scribed material. Censorship makes access difficult, not impossible. However, the one thing
that censorship does ensure is that even the indifferent begin to take interest.
I personally believe that the fundamental right of freedom of speech and expression
must be absolute in any democracy. When I make this statement, I am often considered to
be a reckless libertarian who wants to inflict offensive and deviant speech on ‘normal’ peo-
ple. On the contrary, I make this assertion knowing full well that this would also entail being
subject to speech that would be hurtful and offensive to me. But that is the inevitable price.
Article 19 should ideally protect not just speech that is full of hate on the speaker’s part,
but also speech that maybe hateful to an audience.2 To express what may be offensive to
others, we have to hear what is offensive to us. If this logic sounds self-evident, we have
only to do a consistency check on advocates of free speech. The Hindu Right that is now
valiantly defending Taslima Nasrin’s right to free speech has deployed censorship strategies
as an integral part of their Hindutva campaign. Conversely, the opponents of the Hindu
Right’s censorship attempts have now decided to ban Dwikhandita! Various women’s groups
at various times have demanded the erasure of a series of words and images.
A platitudinous abstraction that circulates during all censorship controversies is that
“one must be careful not to hurt other people’s feelings”. This statement is a summary of
mission impossible. There is no speech that hurts absolutely no one. If we were to ban
sexist speech, for instance, what would we be left with? Perhaps only a handful of films from
448 / Sarai Reader 2004: Crisis/Media
the entire gamut of Bollywood, regional, art, parallel or whatever cinema. Even that handful
would vanish were we to ban ‘casteist’ films! Freedom of speech and expression therefore
is not so much a prophylactic to hurt but the commitment to be able to bear it. This does
not mean that we become passive subjects of hate speech. It simply means that we circu-
late more speech. Counter speech and the expansion of spaces for more speech are the
only ways to fight problematic, hateful or discriminatory speech.
In this essay, I would like to discuss the critical overlap between hate speech and
sexual speech. The intersectionality of hate and sexual speech provides valuable insights
into why sexual stigma becomes integral to hate campaigns. Feminists, in particular, need
to pay careful attention to the implications of obscenity laws that promise to protect women
but in practice end up punishing them.
Harmful Images and Words
The mediascape of the nineties began with deep anxieties and affirmative engagement. The
liberalization of the economy and the ‘opening of the skies’ catalyzed wide-ranging cultural
transformations. Optimism around India partaking of the global community coexisted with
anxieties around collapsing certainties. The rise of the Hindu Right during this time was
therefore accompanied by frequent reminders that Indian culture and tradition were under
threat by various marauding forces.
The new anxieties around the larger cultural transformations saw the enactment of new
laws around speech and expression. In 2000, the Information Technology Act made, among
other restrictions, the publishing of “obscene” electronic matter a punishable offence.
Under this clause, “whoever publishes or transmits or causes to be published in electronic
form any material which is lascivious or appeals to the prurient interest or if its effect is
such as to tend to deprave or corrupt persons who are likely, having regard to all relevant
circumstances, to read, see or hear the matter contained or embodied in it, shall be
punished”. The punishment could be imprisonment upto five years or a fine up to one lakh
rupees. Another clause in the Act allows police officers and other officers to enter, search
“any public place” and “arrest without warrant any person found therein who is reasonably
suspected of having committed, or of committing or being about to commit any offence
under this Act”.
The BJP government introduced similar restrictions in the amendment of the Cable
Television Networks (Regulation) Act (1995) and the Programme and Advertising Code in
addition to bringing TV under the Cinematograph Act of 1952 which had hitherto been
used to pre-censor feature films. The Advertising Code prohibits the telecast of cigarettes,
tobacco, wine, alcohol, liquor and other intoxicants along with infant milk substitutes,
feeding bottle or infant foods.3 These laws were enacted notwithstanding existing laws that
restrict ‘obscene’ speech. For example, Section 292 of the IPC prohibits ‘obscenity,’ which
it defines as any visual or written material that is “lascivious or appeals to prurient interests”
or which has the effect of depraving or corrupting persons exposed to it.4 The Indecent
Representation of Women Act (1986) prohibits indecency, which it defines as “the depiction
of the figure of the woman as to have the effect of being indecent or is likely to deprave or
corrupt public morality.”
Contesting Censorship / 449
It is ironic that in a decade marked by vicious anti-minority propaganda, the majority
of the censorship debates in the nineties have been around obscenity and vulgarity.5
Responding to more transgressive images of women’s bodies, the Hindu Right and feminists,
albeit with different intentions, demanded the proscription of ‘degrading’ images. This only
served to blur the crucial distinctions between sexism and sexual explicitness, coercion and
consent. All sexual expression was being damned as ‘degrading’. Historically, sexually expli-
cit materials have always been the first targets of attack. Suppression of sexually explicit
materials under obscenity laws has included literature on feminist issues like reproductive
health, gay/lesbian issues, cliterodichtomy, marital rape, health and safe sex issues.
The feminist debates around censorship emerged first from the pornography debate
in North America. The ‘radical feminist position’ demands censorship of all pornography
because it is believed to encourage a culture of rape and violence against women. In the
eighties and nineties, this position found its strongest supporters in Catherine MacKinnon
and Andrea Dworkin whose crusade for censorship took inspiration from slogans like
“pornography is the theory and rape is the practice”.
The anti-censorship feminist position, whose politics I share, draw attention to the dif-
ference between sexist speech and sexually explicit speech. We argue that by conflating
sexual explicitness with sexism and misogyny, anti-porn feminists have failed to interrogate
gender-based discrimination in ‘respectable institutions’ such a the family, religion and judi-
ciary. By focusing exclusively on ‘harmful images,’ pro-censorship feminists have under-
stood neither harm nor the complexity of images. Importantly, by framing sexuality within a
discourse of violence, it has encouraged sexphobia and victimology. Anti-censorship femi-
nists repeatedly draw attention to the overwhelming data that fails to show causal links
between pornography and violence. In fact, the absence of causal links is evident from the
work of the very researchers that radical feminists quoted in their ‘anti-porn’ campaigns. In
the 1987 study by Donnerstein, Linz and Penrod, the authors conclude, “Should harsher
penalties be levelled against persons who traffic in pornography? We do not believe so.
Rather, it is our opinion that the most prudent course of action would be development of
educational programmes that would teach viewers to be critical consumers of the media”.6
MacKinnon and Dworkin advocated that victims of sexual violence should litigate and seek
financial redress from producers and distributors of sexually explicit material. A version of this
idea has also been played out in the Indian courts leading to mitigation of several sentences.
The judgement in the Phul Singh vs State, (AIR, 1980 SC 249) reads, “A philanderer of 22, over-
powered by sex stress in excess, hoisted himself into his cousin’s house next door and in broad
daylight overpowered this temptingly lovely prosecutrix of 24, Pushpa, raped her in hurried heat
and made an urgent exit having fulfilled his erotic sortie”.
This judgement by Justice Krishna Iyer reduced the sentence of a rapist partly on grounds
that “modern Indian conditions” are drifting into “societal permissiveness what with proneness
to pornos [sic]…sex explosion in celluloid and bookstalls, etc.”. Similarly, in Reepik Ravinder vs
the State of Andhra Pradesh (1991 Cr J 595), the sentence of a five year old girl’s rapist was
mitigated on grounds that he had “seen too many blue films”.7 Image blaming can easily turn
the criminal agent into a victim and absolve the person of any responsibility for his/her actions.
Instead of helping the woman, the ‘porn-made-me-do-it’ argument is only likely to harm her.
450 / Sarai Reader 2004: Crisis/Media
The Journey to Banning Dwikhandita
The demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992 precipitated communal violence all over India
and a Muslim backlash in Bangladesh. Best-selling Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasrin
responded to the anti-Hindu retaliation in Bangladesh through a hastily written novelette
titled Lajja (Shame, 1993) about a liberal Hindu family caught in the sudden and cata-
strophic communal backlash. Released in 1993, the book sold 60,000 copies before being
banned by the Bangladesh government on grounds that it was inflammatory and likely to
incite communal violence. The Council of Islamic Students declared her a heretic and
demanded her arrest and public hanging. The attack intensified when an interview in The
Statesman of May 9th, 1993, said that she had asked for a “thorough revision” of the
Koran. Contending that the interview misrepresented her position, she issued a clarification
to the newspaper on May 11th:
“My view on this issue is clear and categorical. I hold the Koran, the Vedas, the Bible
and all such religious texts determining the lives of their followers as ‘out of place and out
of time’. We have socio-historical contexts in which these were written and therefore we
should not be guided by their precepts. We have to move beyond these ancient texts if
we have to make progress. In order to respond to our spiritual needs let humanism be your
new faith”.
Clarification notwithstanding, the reproduction of the May 9th interview in Bangladesh
newspapers of June 4th changed her life forever. The Government, headed by Bangladesh
National Party’s Khaleda Zia (whose allies have historically been Islamic fundamentalist
groups), lodged a criminal case against Taslima under Section 295 (A) of the Bangladesh
Penal Code for “outraging religious sentiments” with “deliberate” and “malicious” intent. The
same clause in the Indian Penal Code was invoked against the cultural organization SAHMAT
for allegedly depicting Ram and Sita as siblings in their exhibition Hum Sab Ayodhya after
the demolition of the Babri Masjid. Similarly, it was used to demand artist M.F. Hussain’s
arrest in 1996 for allegedly drawing the goddess Saraswati in the ‘nude’. Taslima had to
flee Bangladesh and live as an exile.
I am often told, even by people who cannot read or write Bengali, that Taslima Nasrin
is an overrated writer. It is also suggested that her books sell because of their explicit dis-
cussion of sex and sexuality. Future generations will agree that Taslima Nasrin is one of the
most important figures in contemporary Bengali writing. Moving away from ornate and
euphemistic rhetoric, Taslima deploys language that is direct, even ruthless. Her feminist
politics emerges not out of victimology but rage. Her sexual explicitness is daring and
unembarrassed. These traits are neither traditionally feminine nor desirable by Bengali
canonical standards. Taslima’s writings assail the canon itself and urge the redefinition of
‘literary merit’. Her style is nowhere more evident than the autobiographical series that she
started writing in exile. The first part, Amar Meyebela (My Girlhood, 1999), covers the first
thirteen years of her life. Utal Hawa (Wild Winds, 2002) and Dwikhandita are the second and
third parts respectively.
The West Bengal Government’s ban on Dwikhandita found unlikely allies in one section
of the Bengali literati, including many advocates of free speech. Why did so many writers
defend the ban? Do they really fear a communal conflagration? If such a fear is genuine,
Contesting Censorship / 451
then why has the Left Front Government never proscribed anti-Muslim hate literature that
the Hindu Right routinely circulates in all states? Or does the discomfort lie somewhere
else? Defending the ban, writer Dibyendu Palit says that “two points” require consideration:
First, Taslima’s “delving into” the “sexual lives” of eminent literary figures in India and
Bangladesh; and second, an appeal from some “Muslim intellectuals, who are not funda-
mentalists”, that the book be banned as it slanders “Prophet Mohammed and Islam” and
is likely to “hurt religious sentiments”. The second consideration is commonplace but the
first one is puzzling.
Why should a state government ban a book because it “delves” into the sexual
lives of eminent literary figures? If “eminent figures” feel misrepresented, they can file
defamation suits and battle it out in court. Why should this be any business of
the State? Interestingly, every writer who supports the ban on Dwikhandita takes
pains to discuss the offensiveness of the sexual content of the book. Writer Sunil
Gangopadhyay says that he finds the sexual content of the book “distasteful” but
supports the ban only on account of two pages that harshly indict Islam. Commenting
on Taslima’s discussion of her sexual relationships with eminent writers, he says,
“Everybody knows that adults enter a sexual relationship on the basis of an unwritten
pact, which is why they close all doors and windows. If someone breaks that trust
then it is a breach of contract and confidentiality which is not only distasteful but
an offence”.8
This is not the first time that the ‘whore stigma’ has caught up with Taslima. During the
controversy on Lajja, the media frequently painted her as a woman who smokes, drinks
and indulges in sexual promiscuity. Clearly, the anxiety around “hurting religious sentiments”
is only a ruse to disguise the moral indignation of Bengal’s cultural guardians. No one
articulates it better than Taslima herself. In an essay titled Shokol Griho Haralo Jaar (The
One Who Loses All Homes), Taslima writes, “I have become the target of a million arrows
of indictment and I am sinking in a quagmire of insults and baseless allegations – all
because I have spoken honestly. Honesty often does not go down well. If the honesty
of Amar Meyebela and Utal Hawa was acceptable, then that of Dwikhandita is not. When
in Amar Meyebela, I described how my childhood was exploited, people sighed and
expressed their sympathies. When in Utal Hawa, I discussed how my husband abused
me, people felt sorry. But when in Dwikhandita, I described multiple sexual relations with
several men, I became the object of shame and disgust. The single reason is that as
long as a woman is oppressed and helpless, weak and beset by misfortunes, she is worthy
of sympathy and goodwill. But when the woman stops being helpless and oppressed and
instead, stands upright and asserts herself and when, for her own emotional and physical
independence, breaks the rotting norms of society, she is no longer liked. Instead she
becomes reprehensible. I know this character of our society well and yet I did not hesitate
to reveal all”.9
Taslima knows the wages of the “whore stigma”. By discussing what is ‘immoral’ and
‘obscene’, she has violated a certain ‘public order’. We may legitimately ask whether
Dwikhandita was censored in the interest of public order or to impose a certain morality on
public life.
452 / Sarai Reader 2004: Crisis/Media
Whores and Goddesses
Hate discourses have historically resorted to the deployment of sexual stigma in order to
demonize their ‘other’. Charges of sexual deviancy and perversity become endemic to hate
propaganda. During the controversy on Fire, the Hindu Right took great pains to show that
homosexuality was alien to the Hindus but integral to the lives of Muslims.10 In an indictment
of Fire, K R Malkani narrates a story about how, after defeating a Hindu King, the “invader”
Mahmud of Ghazni asked him to choose between Islam and death. The Hindu king replied
that he could become a Muslim to save his life provided he was not asked to eat beef or
sleep with a boy. Predictably, the Hindu King was denied his request and he finally chose to
immolate himself!11 Extending the same argument, Bal Thackeray offered to support the film
if the names of the female protagonists were changed to Shabana and Saira instead of
Radha and Sita.
Such sexual demonization is also evident in the controversies around Hussain’s paint-
ings. In October 1996, Bajrang Dal volunteers broke into the Herwitz gallery in Ahmedabad
and destroyed a number of rare and acclaimed paintings by Hussain. The volunteers
defended their actions by declaring that Hussain had painted the goddess Saraswati in the
“nude” and thereby hurt “Hindu religious sentiments”. Hussain was accused of aggravating
communal tension by deliberately painting pictures offensive to Hindus. Regardless of the
facts, the media perpetuated the same idea.
The details are significantly different. This was not a new painting but one made in
1976 and discovered recently by the Hindu Right through its reproduction in Vichar
Mimansa, a BJP-backed magazine.12 Responding to the complaint lodged by the Shiv Sena
government, the Bombay police registered a case against Hussain under Sections 153-A
(promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion, race, etc. and acting
in a manner prejudicial to harmony) and Section 295-A (for perpetrating deliberate and
malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings of any class by insulting its religion or
religious beliefs).
In 1998, a lithograph entitled Sita Rescued was targeted as obscene because it
showed Sita and Hanuman naked. Hussain had produced the lithograph in 1984 for Ramlila
Programmes run by a Lohiaite socialist group. The VHP vandalized the exhibition in Delhi
where the painting had been displayed. A Shiv Sena leader declared that Hussain “wants
to strip our mother naked”. BJP’s Uma Bharti stated that “it is not only a question of
Hindu sentiment but of women sentiment” [sic], and that she would have protested had
Hussain painted “Marian or Khatija in the nude”. She added that Hussain was a “pervert”
who needed “psychiatric treatment”. If Taslima carried the ‘whore stigma’ of excessive
agency, Hussain had turned the goddess into a whore. Both carried the stigma of being
sexual deviants who had “degraded” the image of women in society.
This idea is best evident in writer Iqbal Masud’s attack on Hussain. Calling Hussain’s “artis-
tic depiction of Saraswati distasteful”, he writes, “If Hussain faces himself…he will realize that
his paintings caused serious hurt. He will realize that while he can afford to play around with
Madhuri, he should leave Saraswati alone”.13 Clearly, beneath the degradation argument runs a
strong ‘woman-blaming impulse’. Therefore, bad girls get what they deserve – whether in life or
in representation. This logic lies at the heart of the ‘whore stigma’.
Contesting Censorship / 453
There is a long history of women being punished for having sexual agency. Anne
McClintock has observed how, on the one hand, prostitutes are patronized and silenced as
having inherent lack of agency – as coerced slaves and victims of “false consciousness” –
while on the other they are castigated for having an excess of agency. Evidence of women’s
sexual history is readily introduced during rape trials because our judiciary is still inclined
to believe that whores can’t be raped. Besides, too much sexual agency deserves to
be punished anyway. The central importance of consent in adult sexual relations continues
to escape many. As Margaret Baldwin has remarked, “If ‘no’ means ‘no’, ‘yes’ should also
mean ‘yes’”.
I can already hear some women protesting, “But I am not a whore”. Now try
explaining that in a rape or child custody trial. The definition of a whore is as open to interpre-
tation as words like ‘obscenity’, ‘vulgarity’, ‘depravity’, ‘prurient’, ‘distasteful’, ‘degrading’,
and ‘objectifying’. Attempting to come to a consensus around these terms is like trying to
separate pornography from erotica. The thin dividing line is in everyone’s head and in a
different place. As the common saying goes, “What you like is pornography, and what I like
is erotica”.
Last Word
Among the censors of Dwikhandita, perhaps there are those who truly believe that the
book could incite communal violence. Then these people should be consistent in their
attempt to extirpate all books that could provide similar incitement. What better place
to start than with religious texts because they contain passages that can easily be
read as incitements to violence? Not to mention all propaganda material by the Hindu
Right. If Dibyendu Palit’s ‘non-fundamentalist Muslims’ asked for Hindu Right propaganda
to be banned in West Bengal, would the Left Front government comply? I have
serious doubts. At this point in time, hate speech of the powerful Hindu Right is least
likely to be proscribed. Throughout history, censorship has been used disproportionately
to silence those who are relatively disempowered. It will always be speech on the
margins, not the speech of the powerful that will be suppressed. It is for this reason
that Taslima has written, “No, my writings have never caused catastrophic tragedies like
riots. Whatever happens, happens only to me. The consequent punishment for my writings
has to be borne only by me. It is my house that catches fire. I am the one who has to lose
every home”.14
NOTES
1.
‘Bengal Bans Taslima’s Book”, The Statesman (Saturday, November 29, 2003).
2.
The right to freedom of speech and expression is protected under Article 19 of the Constitution. But
according to the provisions of Article 19 (2), this fundamental right is subject to “reasonable restrictions”.
3.
In order to ensure that censorship provisions are followed, the I&B Ministry under the BJP revived the
Central Monitoring Cell on the Gurgaon-Mehrauli Road. About 120 staff members monitor TV programmes
for “anti-India propaganda” and other violations.
4.
Section 292 is based on an 1868 English decision called the Hicklin case. This decision has been
approved and repeatedly applied by the Supreme Court of India.
454 / Sarai Reader 2004: Crisis/Media
5.
See “The Troubled Existence of Sex and Sexuality: Feminists Engage with Censorship” by Shohini Ghosh
in Christiane Brosius & Melissa Butcher eds., Image Journeys: Audio Visual Media and Cultural Change in
India (Sage, 1999, Delhi).
6.
Linz, D., E. Donnerstein and S. Penrod. “The Findings and Recommendations of the Attorney General’s
Commission on Pornography: Do the Psychological ‘Facts’ fit the Political Fury?” American Psychologist,
42 (1987).
7.
In Gauri Shankar vs. State of Tamil Nadu (JT 1994, 3SC54), popularly called the Auto Shankar case,
the Defence Counsel argued for a mitigation of sentence on grounds that he watched too many films
“depicting sex and violence and illicit business and got misguided and ended up as a criminal” and
therefore, makers of such films were ‘vicariously responsible’”.
8.
“Government Decision to Protect the Innocent”, Interview with Sunil Gangopadhyay, Aaj Kal (December 9,
2003). The translation from Bengali to English is mine.
9.
Desh (December 17, 2003). The translations are mine.
10. Fire directed by Deepa Mehta, is a love story about two married sisters-in-law who fall in love with each
other and have a relationship (1988).
11. Malkani, K R. “Any natural being will concede that homosexuality is unnatural”, The Times of India
(November 22, 1998).
12. Nagpal, Om. “Ye Kasai ya Chitrakar?” (“Is he an Artist or a Butcher?”) in Vichar Mimansa. Accompanying
the article was a photograph of the so-called ‘nude’ Sarawaswati that the editor V.S. Vajpayee had found
in Dhyaneshwar Nadkarni’s book Riding the Lightning. It was a copy of this article that Pramod Navalkar
handed over to the Bombay Police Commissioner.
13. The Times of India (October 13, 1996).
14. Desh (December 17, 2003).
