Books That Were Banned in India Since the 70s

Nilanjana S. Roy writes about books that were banned in India since the 70s in Business Standard. Apparently 70s was the decade when most books were banned – peak of Indira’s power.

“It was increasingly books that “misrepresented” India that were targeted. Desmond Steward’s Early Islam and Michael Edwards Nehru: A Political Biography were both banned in 1975 for what the government considered grievous factual errors, as were Charles Bettelheim’s India Independent and Alan Lawrence’s China’s Foreign Relations Since 1949. Lourenco de Sadvandor’s incendiary, and sadly ill-researched, Who Killed Gandhi was banned in 1979, while the ban on Arthur Koestler’s scathing (but hardly well-informed) view of Eastern religion, The Lotus and the Robot, was carried over from the late ‘60s.”

Satanic Verses ban in late 80s made a big splash…but there were others.

Apparently the newest book to be banned, The True Furqan: the 21st century Quran, was in 2005 – an anti-Islamic book by evangelical Christian proselytizing group.

I wonder if it is an exhaustive list. If it is, I am surprised at how few books were banned in the past three and half decades. My perception was a lot different. May be the banners have just moved on to movies what with latest the Da Vinci Code and Fanaa – they never read the books anyway. Link