Curious case of a ban that isn’t

In a turn as absurd as many things that happen in Salman Rushdie fiction, the order that banned his The Satanic Verses in India in 1988 is missing from the Indian government’s records. Years of RTI pursuits and demands from the court could not make the government yield the order, and what remains as an indication that it existed is a Customs Department notification that carried some letters and numbers that meant nothing. It was a line without meaning, much like a phantom without a person. In the absence of the order, the Delhi High Court has noted that the ban does not exist. The ban was, in fact, not on the book but on its import. But in effect, it became an act of censorship that denied the writer his right to freedom of expression and the readers their right to read.

The Rajiv Gandhi government had decided to ban the book days after it was published in the UK, and India was the first country to do so. The reason cited by the government was the possibility of law and order problems in the country. The book had become controversial because it was alleged that it had blasphemous content. The ban also became controversial as it showed the government succumbing to pressure from orthodoxy and taking the extreme measure of a ban. It is true that the choice between the demands of public order and the need to respect basic rights such as freedom of expression is not easy, and the balance between them is extremely fine and delicate. But governments usually go for the easy option of banning a book or a work of art or applying the scissors of censorship on them. Often, the grounds claimed for the action are maintenance of public order, considerations of public decency, and the need to avoid hurting sentiments. But the real reasons are always political and are about the keenness to please sections of people even at the cost of democratic principles and in violation of the rights of people.

The problem now is not the rights or wrongs of the ban but the loss of evidence of the ban. An inquiry can tell, but it is unlikely to be ordered. Is the missing paper a case of bureaucratic failure to maintain records? That is unusual but not uncharacteristic. The bureaucracy can be both meticulous and sloppy in its ways. Was the ban ordered but not notified? Or is the order untraceable the way many other papers are untraceable in the case of RTI applications? Other possibilities could also be imagined. The Satanic Verses is a leap of imagination. The ban is also now a matter of imagination – a bit real, a bit unreal.