South Asia Citizens Web

Posted below are select editorials from the Indian Press followed by commentary, reactions, reports and statements opposed to the withdrawal of Wendy Doniger’s book in India.

The ongoing attempts to have a deal with the militants who have been causing explosions all over the country are in a sharp contrast with the policy of ignoring the threat of an implosion in Balochistan that is getting more and more serious every day.

In Islamabad, a cleric who unleashed forces from his Lal Masjid to attack and capture government buildings to press for his demand that the constitution of the state be overthrown and replaced with Islamic law, triggering the infamous showdown of July 2007, is once again addressing press conferences.

Twenty five years ago on February 14, the Ayotollah Khomeini issued his fatwa on Salman Rushdie, for the “blasphemies” of his fourth novel, The Satanic Verses. It is perhaps disturbingly apposite that this should also be the week in which Penguin, the publishers of The Satanic Verses, should so abjectly surrender to hardline Hindu groups over Wendy Doniger’s book The Hindus: An Alternative History, agreeing to withdraw it from publication in India. The contrast between the attitude of the old Penguin and that of the new Penguin tells us much about how much the Rushdie affair itself has transformed the landscape of free speech.

It is an abject shame that Penguin will pulp Prof. Wendy Doniger’s The Hindus: An Alternative History. That this decision was reached in a deal with the petitioners, with no consultation with the author compounds the folly.