Some major names of the literary world are speaking out after Penguin India's decision to recall a book. "The Hindus: An Alternative History" chronicles the rise of one of the world's oldest religions. Its author, Wendy Doniger, is respected, and American academic -- a respected American academic. But right-wing Hindu groups say the book contains heresies. CNN's Sumnima Udas has more.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
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SUMNIMA UDAS, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: It's a book that many here in India had never even heard of, but Penguin Book India's decision to withdraw the American historian Wendy Doniger's book called "The Hindus: An Alternative History" from the Indian market has outraged many writers and literary groups here.
Author Arundhati Roy of the Booker Prize-winning "The God of Small Things," wrote a scathing open letter to Penguin, also her publisher, saying, quote, "Even if there was no fatwa, no ban, not even a court order, you have not only caved in, you have humiliated yourself abjectly before a fly-by-night outfit."
She's referring to the Hindu Nationalist group which filed a civil suit against Penguin claiming the book was riddled with heresies and factual inaccuracies and deliberately intending to outrage religious sentiments.
After a four-year legal process, Penguin reached an out-of-court settlement to withdraw the book from India. The publishing giant defends it decision, saying it has an obligation to, quote, "respect the laws of the land in which it operates, however intolerant and restrictive those laws may be."
Doniger blames Indian laws, which guarantees freedom of speech and expression, but at the same time, it makes it a crime to offend religious sentiment in spoken or written words. Proponents of India's penal code, though, say in a country with a history of religious violence, these laws may perhaps be needed.
Sumnima Udas, CNN, New Delhi.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
FOSTER: Well, earlier I spoke with British historian and writer William Dalrymple. He's a vocal critic of the decision to destroy copies of "The Hindus" in India. I began by asking him why Wendy Doniger's book is so controversial amongst some Hindus.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
WILLIAM DALRYMPLE, HISTORIAN AND AUTHOR: It's a clash of two cultures, really. Wendy's a child of the 60s. She does Freudian analysis of Hindu myths. She's a profound and great scholar of Sanskrit, but a Freudian interpretation of these myths often causes upset among very traditional Hindus who are not used to hearing their myths interpreted in any but in a faith context.
And she's a woman who is in love with Hinduism, who has dedicated her life to the Hindu myths, but whose style of interpretation and criticism of them doesn't sit easily with some Diaspora Hindus who are used to hearing it only in the context of the temple and in the way they're used to hearing their myths interpreted, and she's run into a lot of opposition over the years.
She's hugely respected among other scholars. But her style of exposition riles some people up in the Hindu community, particularly among the Diaspora.
FOSTER: And is that a minority, would you say? This is not the general view of Indians in regard to the religious impact of literature?
DALRYMPLE: Well, I think a scholar like Wendy writing for a -- is writing for an audience of intellectuals. And these two worlds don't often meet each other, and it's a clash of two different styles of talking about mythology.
Just like a modern Biblical scholar at a university doing textual analysis of the Gospels will see the Gospels in a different way to an evangelical Christian in a Midwest church. They're two different species, and when the two come into conflict, then they will all come into contact, obviously there's going to be some dissonance.
FOSTER: So, what are your views on Penguin recalling and destroying the copies of the book?
DALRYMPLE: It's become clear that Penguin in fact fought a four-year campaign against this lawsuit, and Wendy herself has made clear what I know personally to be true, that the Indian legal code still has on the statute books, particularly -- a particular statue called 295 A, which makes it a criminal offense to in any way cause offense to anyone else's religion.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
FOSTER: Well, "The Hindus" is just the latest book to court controversy. We went to pick some of the other examples of well-known disputed books here in London, for example, and the publication of Adolph Hitler's "Mein Kampf," the manifesto prohibited in Germany, although many libraries have a copy for academic research.
There's also Salman Rushdie's "The Satanic Verses." This book caused outrage amongst some Muslims when it was published and led to a fatwa calling for Rushdie's death.
And an older example, D.H. Lawrence's "Lady Chatterley's Lover." The uncensored version of the book was actually banned for several decades in the UK, Canada, and Australia. It was deemed to be obscene because of its explicit language and sex scenes.
Well, for more on the recall of "The Hindus" in India, I'm joined now by Madhava Turumella. He's the vice president of the Hindu Forum of Great Britain. Thank you very much for joining us.
MADHAVA TURUMELLA, VICE PRESIDENT, HINDU FORUM OF GREAT BRITAIN: Thanks for having me.
FOSTER: And you're rather pleased with Penguin's decision today. You're not agreeing with some of these authors who think it's a terrible idea.
TURUMELLA: I am happy that Penguin has done it, but at the same time, Hindus' view is that we are very liberal and it is not right to say that we don't encourage freedom of speech. It's not correct. Because it is not that easy to ban a book in India, and India is a particular country.
FOSTER: And your point is that this book hasn't been banned in India.
TURUMELLA: It's not banned at all, yes.
FOSTER: And you wouldn't want it to be banned?
TURUMELLA: No, I don't want it to be banned. But at the same time, I want Wendy to come out and to say clear-cut, point-by-point, raised by Hindus, refute them. But actually, Wendy has this ability to just write whatever she wants to write, and then shoot and scoot. And then she runs away.
So for example, it's not new. Wendy has done -- she wrote an essay on Encarta Encyclopedia, Microsoft Encarta. And Hindus made a lot of inaccuracies, factual inaccuracies. When we raised these points, Wendy never bothered to answer, and Microsoft withdrew that they said factual inaccuracies.
FOSTER: But --
TURUMELLA: Even in this book, by the way.
FOSTER: But would you -- but her full body of work, would you agree that -- you've got a particular issue with this one book, but her full body of work is actually a more solid foundation on which to critique Hinduism?
TURUMELLA: What is her work? Her work, actually it's -- I'm actually brought up in tradition, I'm a priest, I studied with her.
FOSTER: OK.
TURUMELLA: I would say her work, she just translated the Rig Veda, that's all her academic work. The rest of them were, perhaps, she was making commentaries. And those were actually her fantasies or -- I mean, I think that --
FOSTER: OK.
TURUMELLA: -- they are her views.
FOSTER: Away from that, we know that there's a difference of opinion from you and her supporters.
TURUMELLA: Yes.
FOSTER: But this issue that Penguin has got caught up in --
TURUMELLA: Right.
FOSTER: -- your view is that you shouldn't ban the book, but you don't necessarily want it -- you like the fact that it's been taken off the market. Shouldn't you be allowing the public to decide --
TURUMELLA: Exactly.
FOSTER: -- what they think of the book rather than --
TURUMELLA: This is -- yes.
FOSTER: -- saying that they shouldn't even have a right to see the book.
TURUMELLA: This is our problem. We Hindus have been extremely liberal. As a result, we Hindus have been taken for task and these, whatever little, for example, in page 36, Wendy made a comment saying -- a very strong observation saying Hindus do not allow women to study Vedas.
But Vedas -- the Veda, Rig Veda, which she translated, Vedas are 29 -- Vishishtadvaita and our leaders are there. And then, the chapter that claimed the lady wrote 13 hymns. I --
FOSTER: But we're talking here about what lots of people see as freedom of speech. You say you're not against freedom of speech.
TURUMELLA: No, we are not.
FOSTER: But you don't want the book --
(CROSSTALK)
TURUMELLA: I want her to --
FOSTER: -- on the market.
TURUMELLA: I want her to -- no, we're not actually saying that. What I --
FOSTER: But you like the fact that's come off the market.
TURUMELLA: I -- you're not seeing. There is a difference the way that you put it, in a sense, face-saving method, by whoever it is. See, it is not that easy. It was actually out-of-court settlement. It should have done -- my wish was it should have gone through the court --
(CROSSTALK)
FOSTER: And ended up with the supreme court.
TURUMELLA: -- entire. It has to go through the entire law process. But then, why did they wait to drop? Because the law that factually it contains a lot of inaccuracies.
FOSTER: Well, there you're in agreement with everyone on this issue, because a lot of people who disagree with you wish it had gone to the supreme court and hadn't been dealt with outside court so it could have been dealt with as a national issue.
TURUMELLA: Hindus have been vindicated if this case had gone to the supreme court. Because see, your freedom of expression should not become our insult. We have tolerated enough, and I was saying --
(CROSSTALK)
FOSTER: But you want to --
TURUMELLA: -- these pages --
FOSTER: But the case in the court was to take it out of circulation, really, wasn't it? And you --
TURUMELLA: It is not the court which said -- Penguin Publisher said it.
FOSTER: I know, but ultimately, that's what you wanted them to do.
TURUMELLA: No. Ultimately, we wanted the truth to come out. The truth has to come out. Let's debate. Let's go to the --
(CROSSTALK)
FOSTER: We can't have a debate if the book isn't out --
TURUMELLA: No, actually --
FOSTER: -- and people can't even read it.
TURUMELLA: So, you want us to go out onto the streets like some Salman Rushdie? What happened to Salman Rushdie and that? So, we don't want to go onto the streets. We went through the legal process. Is that wrong? India is a legal country. It's a secular country. You have the freedom of expression, but you are --
(CROSSTALK)
FOSTER: But freedom of expression is a multitude of views, and that view has been taken out of the market.
TURUMELLA: No, it has not. They have taken it out. We wanted it to continue. They have taken it out. Who wanted them to take it out? And they have taken -- their legal experts said no, take it out. Factual inaccuracies, that is what we're saying. Please don't try to bring inaccuracies into -- and say that this is your history.
FOSTER: OK.
TURUMELLA: Who are you to say this is our history? We are Hindus. I'm brought up in tradition. I'm not agreeing with you. Come, let's fight about it legally. Let's fight about it and let's come to a table and talk about it. And I challenge -- and there are so many inaccuracies there.
FOSTER: OK.
TURUMELLA: So, this is the problem with that.
FOSTER: Well, like you say, you didn't get that opportunity, because it was settled out of court.
TURUMELLA: She was --
FOSTER: Thank you very much, indeed, for joining us here.
TURUMELLA: Thank you for having me.
FOSTER: There's been a lot of reaction to this story on our Facebook page, as you can imagine. Here's a sample of what you've had to say from viewers on both sides of the debate.
One viewer says, "India is claiming itself as the world's biggest democracy, and we all know that freedom of speech is a fundamental of democracy. India should not ban it."
On the other side of the debate is this viewer, who said, "So, you can publish a book that may be factually incorrect and claim that it should be allowed to prove freedom of expression? We don't reject only to someone hurting our sentiments, but also the sentiments of those practicing other religions."
The team at CNN CONNECT THE WORLD want to hear from you. What do you think about Penguin India's decision to recall "The Hindus"? Is it right to move to avoid possible unrest, or is it an attack on freedom of expression or speech? Well, facebook.com/CNNconnect is where you can have your say. You can also tweet me @MaxFosterCNN, your thought please, @MaxFosterCNN.
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1402/14/ctw.01.html
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
SUMNIMA UDAS, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: It's a book that many here in India had never even heard of, but Penguin Book India's decision to withdraw the American historian Wendy Doniger's book called "The Hindus: An Alternative History" from the Indian market has outraged many writers and literary groups here.
Author Arundhati Roy of the Booker Prize-winning "The God of Small Things," wrote a scathing open letter to Penguin, also her publisher, saying, quote, "Even if there was no fatwa, no ban, not even a court order, you have not only caved in, you have humiliated yourself abjectly before a fly-by-night outfit."
She's referring to the Hindu Nationalist group which filed a civil suit against Penguin claiming the book was riddled with heresies and factual inaccuracies and deliberately intending to outrage religious sentiments.
After a four-year legal process, Penguin reached an out-of-court settlement to withdraw the book from India. The publishing giant defends it decision, saying it has an obligation to, quote, "respect the laws of the land in which it operates, however intolerant and restrictive those laws may be."
Doniger blames Indian laws, which guarantees freedom of speech and expression, but at the same time, it makes it a crime to offend religious sentiment in spoken or written words. Proponents of India's penal code, though, say in a country with a history of religious violence, these laws may perhaps be needed.
Sumnima Udas, CNN, New Delhi.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
FOSTER: Well, earlier I spoke with British historian and writer William Dalrymple. He's a vocal critic of the decision to destroy copies of "The Hindus" in India. I began by asking him why Wendy Doniger's book is so controversial amongst some Hindus.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
WILLIAM DALRYMPLE, HISTORIAN AND AUTHOR: It's a clash of two cultures, really. Wendy's a child of the 60s. She does Freudian analysis of Hindu myths. She's a profound and great scholar of Sanskrit, but a Freudian interpretation of these myths often causes upset among very traditional Hindus who are not used to hearing their myths interpreted in any but in a faith context.
And she's a woman who is in love with Hinduism, who has dedicated her life to the Hindu myths, but whose style of interpretation and criticism of them doesn't sit easily with some Diaspora Hindus who are used to hearing it only in the context of the temple and in the way they're used to hearing their myths interpreted, and she's run into a lot of opposition over the years.
She's hugely respected among other scholars. But her style of exposition riles some people up in the Hindu community, particularly among the Diaspora.
FOSTER: And is that a minority, would you say? This is not the general view of Indians in regard to the religious impact of literature?
DALRYMPLE: Well, I think a scholar like Wendy writing for a -- is writing for an audience of intellectuals. And these two worlds don't often meet each other, and it's a clash of two different styles of talking about mythology.
Just like a modern Biblical scholar at a university doing textual analysis of the Gospels will see the Gospels in a different way to an evangelical Christian in a Midwest church. They're two different species, and when the two come into conflict, then they will all come into contact, obviously there's going to be some dissonance.
FOSTER: So, what are your views on Penguin recalling and destroying the copies of the book?
DALRYMPLE: It's become clear that Penguin in fact fought a four-year campaign against this lawsuit, and Wendy herself has made clear what I know personally to be true, that the Indian legal code still has on the statute books, particularly -- a particular statue called 295 A, which makes it a criminal offense to in any way cause offense to anyone else's religion.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
FOSTER: Well, "The Hindus" is just the latest book to court controversy. We went to pick some of the other examples of well-known disputed books here in London, for example, and the publication of Adolph Hitler's "Mein Kampf," the manifesto prohibited in Germany, although many libraries have a copy for academic research.
There's also Salman Rushdie's "The Satanic Verses." This book caused outrage amongst some Muslims when it was published and led to a fatwa calling for Rushdie's death.
And an older example, D.H. Lawrence's "Lady Chatterley's Lover." The uncensored version of the book was actually banned for several decades in the UK, Canada, and Australia. It was deemed to be obscene because of its explicit language and sex scenes.
Well, for more on the recall of "The Hindus" in India, I'm joined now by Madhava Turumella. He's the vice president of the Hindu Forum of Great Britain. Thank you very much for joining us.
MADHAVA TURUMELLA, VICE PRESIDENT, HINDU FORUM OF GREAT BRITAIN: Thanks for having me.
FOSTER: And you're rather pleased with Penguin's decision today. You're not agreeing with some of these authors who think it's a terrible idea.
TURUMELLA: I am happy that Penguin has done it, but at the same time, Hindus' view is that we are very liberal and it is not right to say that we don't encourage freedom of speech. It's not correct. Because it is not that easy to ban a book in India, and India is a particular country.
FOSTER: And your point is that this book hasn't been banned in India.
TURUMELLA: It's not banned at all, yes.
FOSTER: And you wouldn't want it to be banned?
TURUMELLA: No, I don't want it to be banned. But at the same time, I want Wendy to come out and to say clear-cut, point-by-point, raised by Hindus, refute them. But actually, Wendy has this ability to just write whatever she wants to write, and then shoot and scoot. And then she runs away.
So for example, it's not new. Wendy has done -- she wrote an essay on Encarta Encyclopedia, Microsoft Encarta. And Hindus made a lot of inaccuracies, factual inaccuracies. When we raised these points, Wendy never bothered to answer, and Microsoft withdrew that they said factual inaccuracies.
FOSTER: But --
TURUMELLA: Even in this book, by the way.
FOSTER: But would you -- but her full body of work, would you agree that -- you've got a particular issue with this one book, but her full body of work is actually a more solid foundation on which to critique Hinduism?
TURUMELLA: What is her work? Her work, actually it's -- I'm actually brought up in tradition, I'm a priest, I studied with her.
FOSTER: OK.
TURUMELLA: I would say her work, she just translated the Rig Veda, that's all her academic work. The rest of them were, perhaps, she was making commentaries. And those were actually her fantasies or -- I mean, I think that --
FOSTER: OK.
TURUMELLA: -- they are her views.
FOSTER: Away from that, we know that there's a difference of opinion from you and her supporters.
TURUMELLA: Yes.
FOSTER: But this issue that Penguin has got caught up in --
TURUMELLA: Right.
FOSTER: -- your view is that you shouldn't ban the book, but you don't necessarily want it -- you like the fact that it's been taken off the market. Shouldn't you be allowing the public to decide --
TURUMELLA: Exactly.
FOSTER: -- what they think of the book rather than --
TURUMELLA: This is -- yes.
FOSTER: -- saying that they shouldn't even have a right to see the book.
TURUMELLA: This is our problem. We Hindus have been extremely liberal. As a result, we Hindus have been taken for task and these, whatever little, for example, in page 36, Wendy made a comment saying -- a very strong observation saying Hindus do not allow women to study Vedas.
But Vedas -- the Veda, Rig Veda, which she translated, Vedas are 29 -- Vishishtadvaita and our leaders are there. And then, the chapter that claimed the lady wrote 13 hymns. I --
FOSTER: But we're talking here about what lots of people see as freedom of speech. You say you're not against freedom of speech.
TURUMELLA: No, we are not.
FOSTER: But you don't want the book --
(CROSSTALK)
TURUMELLA: I want her to --
FOSTER: -- on the market.
TURUMELLA: I want her to -- no, we're not actually saying that. What I --
FOSTER: But you like the fact that's come off the market.
TURUMELLA: I -- you're not seeing. There is a difference the way that you put it, in a sense, face-saving method, by whoever it is. See, it is not that easy. It was actually out-of-court settlement. It should have done -- my wish was it should have gone through the court --
(CROSSTALK)
FOSTER: And ended up with the supreme court.
TURUMELLA: -- entire. It has to go through the entire law process. But then, why did they wait to drop? Because the law that factually it contains a lot of inaccuracies.
FOSTER: Well, there you're in agreement with everyone on this issue, because a lot of people who disagree with you wish it had gone to the supreme court and hadn't been dealt with outside court so it could have been dealt with as a national issue.
TURUMELLA: Hindus have been vindicated if this case had gone to the supreme court. Because see, your freedom of expression should not become our insult. We have tolerated enough, and I was saying --
(CROSSTALK)
FOSTER: But you want to --
TURUMELLA: -- these pages --
FOSTER: But the case in the court was to take it out of circulation, really, wasn't it? And you --
TURUMELLA: It is not the court which said -- Penguin Publisher said it.
FOSTER: I know, but ultimately, that's what you wanted them to do.
TURUMELLA: No. Ultimately, we wanted the truth to come out. The truth has to come out. Let's debate. Let's go to the --
(CROSSTALK)
FOSTER: We can't have a debate if the book isn't out --
TURUMELLA: No, actually --
FOSTER: -- and people can't even read it.
TURUMELLA: So, you want us to go out onto the streets like some Salman Rushdie? What happened to Salman Rushdie and that? So, we don't want to go onto the streets. We went through the legal process. Is that wrong? India is a legal country. It's a secular country. You have the freedom of expression, but you are --
(CROSSTALK)
FOSTER: But freedom of expression is a multitude of views, and that view has been taken out of the market.
TURUMELLA: No, it has not. They have taken it out. We wanted it to continue. They have taken it out. Who wanted them to take it out? And they have taken -- their legal experts said no, take it out. Factual inaccuracies, that is what we're saying. Please don't try to bring inaccuracies into -- and say that this is your history.
FOSTER: OK.
TURUMELLA: Who are you to say this is our history? We are Hindus. I'm brought up in tradition. I'm not agreeing with you. Come, let's fight about it legally. Let's fight about it and let's come to a table and talk about it. And I challenge -- and there are so many inaccuracies there.
FOSTER: OK.
TURUMELLA: So, this is the problem with that.
FOSTER: Well, like you say, you didn't get that opportunity, because it was settled out of court.
TURUMELLA: She was --
FOSTER: Thank you very much, indeed, for joining us here.
TURUMELLA: Thank you for having me.
FOSTER: There's been a lot of reaction to this story on our Facebook page, as you can imagine. Here's a sample of what you've had to say from viewers on both sides of the debate.
One viewer says, "India is claiming itself as the world's biggest democracy, and we all know that freedom of speech is a fundamental of democracy. India should not ban it."
On the other side of the debate is this viewer, who said, "So, you can publish a book that may be factually incorrect and claim that it should be allowed to prove freedom of expression? We don't reject only to someone hurting our sentiments, but also the sentiments of those practicing other religions."
The team at CNN CONNECT THE WORLD want to hear from you. What do you think about Penguin India's decision to recall "The Hindus"? Is it right to move to avoid possible unrest, or is it an attack on freedom of expression or speech? Well, facebook.com/CNNconnect is where you can have your say. You can also tweet me @MaxFosterCNN, your thought please, @MaxFosterCNN.
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1402/14/ctw.01.html