India has seen courageous publishers. In 1861, Reverend James Long was sentenced to prison and fined Rs 1,000 by a British court for publishing the English translation of Nil Darpan, a play on the atrocities committed by indigo planters written by Dinabandhu Mitra. But this took place in a world seemingly different from the one in which Joe Sacco’s journalistic *comic book, The Once and Future Riot, which examines the 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots, was refused distribution by Penguin Random House India, one of India’s biggest publishers. Mr Sacco is the most famous among artists and writers who use the comic-book form for serious journalism, and has been producing works on conflicts and people’s movements throughout the world for 30 years. The refusal was based on technicalities, such as the accuracy of a hand-drawn map. The importance of the subject and Mr Sacco’s use of comic-book techniques that convey the richness of his research through the complexity of events and multiplicity of voices seem to make the grounds of the refusal rather flimsy.

Did the publisher find the subject of Mr Sacco’s book too sensitive for the people or are the times too uncertain? Governments and publishers, especially English-language publishers, seem to share a fear of inflaming or ‘hurting’ the sentiments of particular groups. Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses was banned in India under Rajiv Gandhi’s government for fear of blasphemy and public disorder since the largest minority community was protesting against it. This may be the most memorable ban, but earlier, in 1964, V.S. Naipaul’s travelogue, An Area of Darkness, was banned under Lal Bahadur Shastri’s government because of its negative portrayal of India. Do Indian readers have weak stomachs? The publisher that refused to distribute Mr Sacco’s book withdrew and pulped Wendy Doniger’s work, The Hindus: An Alternative History, in 2014 because of legal action based on religious sentiment. It is not always religion; history and politics are other targets. James Laine’s Shivaji: Hindu King in Islamic India was banned in Maharashtra in 2004; Joseph Lelyveld’s book on M.K. Gandhi was banned in Gujarat and Maharashtra in 2011; Arundhati Roy’s Azadi and Kashmir: The Case for Freedom was withdrawn from Kashmir in 2025 —this list could go on.

Clearly, all governments perpetuate the culture of proscription. But it is the Anglophone publishing world’s easy surrender to it that is most noticeable. Creativity and research are often disturbing; they ask questions and compel thought. The constitutional right to freedom of expression is violated repeatedly with bans of publication and distribution of works outside publishers’ — or governments’ — comfort zones. This stifles creative freedom while infantilising the people and pandering to intolerant attitudes. Publishers fail to stand up for unorthodox, independent thinking or controversial subjects; they would rather avoid protests, the government’s ire and misdirected legal action. Have they lost the strength of conviction in creative and academic freedom? Toeing the line of the Establishment — sometimes pre-emptively — is a betrayal of both constitutional principles and their profession.