nilanjana s roy

Tag: censorship

  • An open letter to S Anand

    An open letter to S Anand

    From The Hindu: The Delhi-based publisher Navayana has decided to cancel the agreement for release of the English translation of Mr. D’Cruz’s first Tamil novel Aazhi Soozh Ulagu (Ocean Ringed World) in the wake of his recent political stand on Mr. Modi. An open letter to S Anand and Navayana Dear Anand,   Somewhere along…

  • Speaking Volumes: The reader of Robben Island

    (Published in the Business Standard, June 24th, 2013, as news came in that Nelson Mandela had been hospitalized.)  The prison rules on Robben Island allowed the incarcerated to study, with some caveats. Their most famous prisoner, Nelson Mandela, meant to continue reading, no matter how small his cell. The Robben Island library was limited, though…

  • Speaking Volumes: Freedom For The Thought We Hate

    (A shorter version of this was published in the Business Standard, 4th February, 2013. This is only a brief and partial look at some judgements on free speech and artistic expression in India, and does not claim to be comprehensive.) The problem with this country’s vast throngs of would-be censors, from the genuinely easily offended…

  • Writers, October: Ismat Chughtai

    The Lihaf trial, from The Journal of Urdu Studies: http://www.urdustudies.com/pdf/15/28naqviExerpt.pdf  “There was a big crowd in the court. Several people had advised us to offer our apologies to the judge, even offering to pay the fines on our behalf. The proceedings had lost some of their verve, the witnesses who were called in to prove that “Lihaaf” was…

  • The BS column: “Carve out my own heart”: Mo Yan

    Mo Yan’s books speak louder than the writer’s public silence (Published in the Business Standard, October 16, 2012) If the task before a writer is to be a spokesman against injustice, a defiant risk-taker who is unafraid to criticize his state openly and often, Mo Yan is a failure. As many dissident Chinese writers and…

  • Banned Books Week: Chiki Sarkar, from the publisher’s desk

    I am writing here as a publisher and as someone who has to deal with injunctions against books on a regular basis. I wanted to use this blog to think a little about how these injunctions work and what they mean for us publishers. In the last year at Penguin, I have encountered two injunctions…

  • Banned Books Week: Arpita Das on Reading In Sin

    READING IN SIN by Arpita Das  As far back as I remember I can hear my father’s words to my brother and myself, ‘Try everything once at least in life, even if it is a vice. And read absolutely everything.’ I internalized both pieces of advice to a fault perhaps, and when I turned 13,…