“Nobody wants several years of their effort and research to go waste… Writers would now think 10 times before taking up something like a political biography,” she says, hoping there would soon be some kind of a writers’ movement against tabooing books. Writers are gradually beginning to censor themselves, trying to write things that are safe and sweet and far from problematic, she rues. It is disconcerting to see books (on legendary heroes, political figures and alternative histories) getting proscribed for being politically incorrect.
In hindsight, though, she’s a bit ashamed that she did not do anything against the ban. ‘Rani’ is doing well online and at bookshops in Lucknow, said the author in a conversation with With no hullabaloo over the ban, it was eventually forgotten. Presumably, the government resorted to the ploy to divert public attention from the raging famine. Misra, then a resident of London, did not oppose the ban for ‘pragmatic reasons’, even as her publisher, Penguin, chose to soft-pedal the development. This kind of self-censorship by authors under duress is smothering a whole body of literature, warns author Jaishree Misra, whose historical romance “Rani” - on the Rani of Jhansi - was outlawed by the government of Uttar Pradesh in 2008 claiming it hurt the sentiments of the people of Bundelkhand, which at that time was reeling under a terrible drought!
The alacrity with which political biographies and books on history are banned and even pulped in India has made authors edgy about venturing into these genres.
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