I woke up a little late this lazy Friday, which happens to be Rakshabandhan, the festival where sisters tie rakhis on their brothers, who are then contractually obliged by tradition to defend them. My eyes landed on a curious headline. Penguin Random House India had reportedly withdrawn from publishing the Congress leader Sonia Gandhi’s forthcoming memoir, Belonging: A Journey of Love. Reports claimed that the book, already published internationally by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Penguin Random House, was stuck at the publisher’s India office, which had withdrawn from the project after seeking changes to the manuscript. Penguin India subsequently issued an unclear denial/non-denial that did not really clear the air.Lately, books appeal to me more than ever, perhaps because I have now tried my hand at writing one myself, a book on a spiritual guru who preaches pluralism (Premanand Maharaj: Messenger of Religious Harmony and Divine Love). But, as a political reporter, political memoirs always make my antennae quiver, and I was eagerly waiting for Sonia’s book. Lately, I have also been rediscovering an old passion for motorcycles, while my spouse dreams of opening a hill café called “Books and Bakes”—a marked improvement, according to her, over my own suggestion, “Books and Bikes”. But in both versions, as you notice, it is the books that come first.So when I read the news, my first thought was that perhaps books too need some raksha (protection). Rather more, in fact, than our behens (sisters), who are quite capable of protecting themselves. In my own experience, sisters extend raksha to their brothers more often than the reverse, risking their lives to donate organs (kidneys, livers and the rest) in medical emergencies. As do daughters; I think of Lalu Prasad’s daughter, Rohini Yadav, who donated a kidney to her father. Medical data has historically shown a higher proportion of women donating organs to male relatives than the other way round.Coming back to books—my plans for a cafe depend, as you can imagine, on the survival of books. Unfortunately, however, in our country books have become the new Lajwanti (Mimosa pudica), the plant that wilts at the touch of a finger.How did books become so chhui-mui (touch-me-nots) in a land that once published, with considerable gusto, everything from materialist philosophy (the Cārvāka or Lokāyata school) to treatises on sex and emotional fulfilment (the Kama Sutra and the Kok Shastra, or Rati Rahasya)? It is baffling.Are books about politics or politicians simply more combustible? Or is it that such books are rarely allowed to speak freely, and are used instead either to burnish or demolish an agenda?I remember well the controversy when Spanish author Javier Moro’s biographical novel The Red Sari was headed for an India release in 2010. The Congress objected strongly, alleging that the book violated personal privacy for profit and contained invented conversations; the party’s lawyers issued notices and defamation threats. The book had already appeared in Spain in 2008, but all hell broke loose when it reached India, and it could not be officially released here until 2015, when the Congress went out of power.A similar controversy erupted in 2009 over Jinnah: India, Partition, Independence, written by the then out-of-favour BJP leader Jaswant Singh, a former External Affairs Minister. Singh’s book faulted Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel’s handling of the Partition, but it was his praise of Mohammad Ali Jinnah that truly irked the ruling BJP. The Gujarat government banned the book; Singh challenged the ban in court, and won. He was expelled from the BJP, a party he had belonged to since its Bharatiya Jana Sangh days.Down the years, Parliament has watched rival parties accuse each other of banning books that embarrass them, and the pattern persists. Each time, a publisher either withdraws the book or delays its release.So, should books stay away from politicians, or is it politicians who should be told to keep an arm’s length from books? But then, of course, we will lose the spice. In a country where politics is arguably the most engaging pursuit after religion—some might even rank it first—the book world would be considerably poorer without politicians, and without the dime-a-dozen godmen dispensing salvation like instant coffee.And every idea deserves the chance to be argued, debated, demolished, or accepted. When the investigative biography Godman to Tycoon: The Untold Story of Baba Ramdev was published in 2017, its publishers faced legal threats too. And who can forget that in 1988, India became the first country in the world to ban Salman Rushdie’s novel The SatanicVerses, even before any Islamic nation did? Not to mention the storm that followed the 1993 publication of Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasrin’s Lajja, which depicted the persecution of a Hindu family in Bangladesh after the 1992 Babri Masjid demolition.Fresher still are the memories of when the government withheld clearance for Penguin Random House India from publishing the former Army Chief Gen. M.M. Naravane’s memoir, Four Stars of Destiny, which touches on the Galwan clashes with China and the Agnipath scheme; and when earlier this year, again, Penguin Random House India stopped the distribution of cartoonist Joe Sacco’s The Once and Future Riot, on the Muzaffarnagar riots.I make no comment on the merits of any of these cases, nor do I draw parallels between them. I simply ask this: can we not breathe a little open air? Can the printed word not be countered with open debate, or with another book?Oscar Wilde once observed that the books the world calls immoral are the ones that show the world its own shame. That brings to mind Saadat Hasan Manto’s defence of his own writing. “If you cannot bear these stories, then society is unbearable. Who am I to remove the clothes of this society, which itself is naked? I don’t even try to cover it, because that is not my job; that’s the job of dressmakers.”Manto held up a mirror to society. Unable to bear its own reflection, society routinely hurled the mirror back at him, and was cut, again and again, by the broken glass. I close this newsletter on that note.Do let us know what you think about books, book bans, and everything in between.Anand MishraPolitical Editor,FrontlineCONTRIBUTE YOUR COMMENTS