Is India A Nation of Bans And Censorships?

Bangalore: India has witnessed a number of occasions where there have been bans on books, films, plays and ideologies in the last two decades. From Salman Rushdie's ‘The Satanic Verses’ to MF Husain's nude paintings of Hindu goddesses, from Vijay Tendulkar's Marathi masterpiece ‘Me Nathuram Godse Boltoy’ to Mahabanoo Mody Kotwal's adaptation of American play ‘Vagina Monologues’ and from NRI filmmaker Deepa Mehta to Bollywood director Anurag Kashyap, India has seen a series of bans, censorships, court cases, allegations, threats and violence.

Recently Mamata Banerjee government banned English and mass-circulation Bengali dailies at state-sponsored and aided libraries. Then another episode came to light, where a Jadavpur University professor was arrested for allegedly posting a cartoon on the internet showing the  West Bengal Chief Minister in poor light after she forced out Dinesh Trivedi and put Mukul Roy in his place as Railway minister. And now, the West Bengal government decided to ban German philosopher Marx from the higher secondary history syllabus.

The German philosopher has been under attack since last summer when the 34-year old communist rule was swept away by the Trinamool Congress. Backing the ban, Avik Majumdar, the head of the school education syllabus committee said, "We have tried to give our history syllabus a balanced approach. If there was any excess of anything, including Marx, it has to be done away with," as reported by Hindustan Times.

This brings us down to one question – Is India a nation of bans and censorships? Is our nation not ready to accommodate voice of dissent? Do we in reality get 'hurt' by an individual’s opinion on religion, morality and social conduct? Or is it merely a matter of impulse of an individual or a group? Hindustantimes.com surveyed its readers to know their responses.