Why is authority scared of books?

IN PERSPECTIVE

Since when have books, and that too classics, become a security risk in India? That is the question everyone seems to be asking, including the judges of Bombay High Court.

Recently, the Bombay High Court expressed surprise at the Taloja prison officials’ decision to disallow Elgar Parishad case-accused Gautam Navlakha access to a book authored by one of the world’s best-known humour writers, P G Wodehouse, calling it a security risk.

“PG Wodehouse is considered a security threat? That’s quite comical,” Justice Sunil Shukre said. The judge added that Marathi writer Purushottam Laxman Deshpande (popular as ‘Pula Deshpande’), was also inspired by Wodehouse.

Navlakha had sought two books, The World of Jeeves and Wooster by Wodehouse and Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States by James Scott. The books eventually reached Navlakha in prison, after an order by the court.

P G Wodehouse was a comic genius who is read widely all over the world. He wrote over 90 books, several plays and film scripts, and is best known as the creator of the fictional character Jeeves.

With his devastating wit and sense of humour, Wodehouse, if alive, would have offered a fitting response to his book being dubbed a ‘security risk’. Perhaps, he may have repeated his famous line: “He had just about enough intelligence to open his mouth when he wanted to eat, but certainly no more.”

Last year, Sudha Bharadwaj, another accused in the same case, was allowed access to five books a month from outside the prison, but only after a special NIA court stepped in.

Then there is the case of co-accused Vernon Gonsalves, who was asked by a Bombay High Court judge to explain the “objectionable material” found at his home – in his case, a copy of Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace!

Tolstoy is another great, inspirational writer whose books have had a lasting appeal. As a literary classic, War and Peace is taught in schools and colleges.

What is it about books, and detainees who seek books, that sets alarm bells ringing among law-enforcing authorities? Have they taken Russel Davies’ quote “Books are the best weapon in the world” literally? That books can be dangerous? Or, is it plain ignorance?

Of course, prison officials can censor or disallow books that threaten security in the prison or incite violence or contain pornography. But good, readable books by world-renowned authors that have stood the test of time?

Books have always been useful companions to activists and the literate while serving time in prison. The leaders of the freedom struggle, such as Gandhi, Nehru, Bose and Patel read a lot when incarcerated.

From his first imprisonment in 1908 until his final jail sentence between 1942 and 1944, Gandhi read intensely and developed a reading programme that helped him much in public life. He also extended the programme to his colleagues so that jail sentences became opportunities for collective engagement with books and collaborative mobilisation of the information and ideas in them. Nehru, too, read prodigiously whenever he was under arrest. And both Nehru and Gandhi wrote books in prison. Gandhi wrote My Experiments with Truth in Pune’s Yerwada jail; Nehru wrote The Discovery of India in Ahmednagar prison. Jayaprakash Narayan wrote Prison Diary in jail.

For intellectual activists such as Navlakha and others, reading is as essential as fresh air and food. It has also something to do with the solitude and disgust in prison when books help one retain sanity and keep the mind active. To deny them such basics is inhuman.

In fact, preventing access to books to anybody in jail or detention is a strange and arbitrary measure, denying them their intellectual freedom.

It is well-known how, in our country, prisoners with money and influence can get everything -- from liquor and cigarettes to mobile phones to other luxuries -- to enable them to lead a lavish life in jail. People such as Navlakha are only asking for books to nourish their minds.

Rightfully, anyone in prison deserves to have access to some education and entertainment, it is a basic human need. As an American Supreme Court judge said, even behind the high walls of prisons, prisoners don’t lose their human qualities nor do their minds become closed to ideas. In fact, their need for self-respect and self-realisation are more compelling in the dehumanising jail environment.

It is high time the powers-that-be adopt a humane, pragmatic approach towards prisoners by providing them with their basic needs such as straws, sippers, reading glasses, medicines and books to allow them to learn, grow, dream, hope, thrive and survive. That would enable them a successful transition to freedom and help them to move on in life.