Plea to ban Khushwant’s novel rejected

NEW DELHI, JAN 3: The Union Home ministry has turned down a plea to ban noted columnist Khushwant Singh's book The Company of Women mainta...

NEW DELHI, JAN 3: The Union Home ministry has turned down a plea to ban noted columnist Khushwant Singh’s book The Company of Women maintaining that the choice of reading should prudently be left to the good sense of the reader.

Passing his order on a representation made by an advocate, K S Radhakrishnan, for banning the book, Home secretary Kamal Pande said interference with the freedom of expression and reading should be in the rarest of rare cases and that no conscious attempt was being made to circulate and distribute copies of the book among people of impressionable age. Radhakrishnan in his representation sought a ban on the book on the ground that it carried certain portions which were obscene and violative of public decency and morality.

The Madras high court dismissed a public interest litigation filed by him in this regard recently but directed the Union Home secretary to consider the representation and pass appropriate orders.

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The Home secretary referred to Singh’s note in the book saying"… I started writing this novel when I was eighty-three. I finished it at eighty-five. An equally apt title for it could be: The fantasies of an octogenarian. No character in this expose are real: they are figments of my senile fantasies".

The Home secretary observed in his order that if he was to weigh the book’s potential for corrupting or depraving a reader’s mind against the sanctity of the fundamental freedom of expression enshrined in the constitution which also implicitly provides freedom to an Indian citizen to decide what to read and what not to, he would have no hesitation in opting for the latter.The order noted that Singh was a successful and widely-read writer in the English language.

He is known, inter alia, for his two volume history of Sikhs and several novels.

His proclivity for pungent and sex-oriented writing is well known though in certain quarters it is accepted with amusement while in others it is frowned upon and adversely commented upon.

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"Notwithstanding how a readingsegment of the public is disposed towards him, he is respected as an author," the order said.