Statement by National Book Critics Circle on Wendy Doniger’s ‘The Hindus

by Admin | Feb-12-2014

The National Book Critics Circle wishes to voice its support for author and distinguished scholar Wendy Doniger and to register its concern and disappointment over the decision of Penguin Books India, the publishers of the lauded The Hindus: An Alternative History, to withdraw and pulp all remaining copies of Professor Doniger’s award-winning book for sale in India. The NBCC, which honored Professor Doniger’s substantial and compelling work by naming it a finalist for the 2009 award in nonfiction, urges Penguin Books India to reconsider its deplorable decision to remove The Hindus from circulation in the country, a de facto act of self-censorship that will only contribute to a further rolling back of free speech in India. Such an action, accompanied by Penguin Books India’s plan to cease distribution of the book in the face of legal and other threats from Hindu nationalists, is incompatible with the traditions of free inquiry that are necessary for democratic institutions to function. The NBCC appeals to Penguin Books India to support Professor Doniger and her important work and to reverse its decision immediately.


News reports in Time, the New York Times, the Times of India.



 





About the Critical Mass Blog

Commentary on literary criticism, publishing, writing, and all things NBCC related. It's written by independent members of the NBCC Board of Directors (see list of bloggers below).

Subscribe

SIGN UP FOR CRITICAL NOTES





Categories & Archives

Become a Friend of the NBCC

Upcoming Events

NBCC Finalists’ Reading: March 11th, 2015

NBCC Awards Ceremony and Reception: March 12th, 2015

NBCC at AWP with Anthony Marra and Alice McDermott: April 09th, 2015


NBCC Awards

See all award winners

Find out how to submit

Read how we select

Frequently Asked Questions

Awards news


Videos and Podcasts

Ben Fountain and Amy Tan at AWP with Jane Ciabattari

NBCC 2013 Finalists Reading

NBCC 2013 Awards Ceremony

NBCC Finalists Interviewed at The New School

Video: New Literary Journals

Video: The VIDA Count and Gender Bias in Book Reviewing

Podcast: What Is Criticism? NBCC Winners and Finalists at AWP

All videos and podcasts.



Real Time Analytics
http://bookcritics.org/blog/archive/statement-by-national-book-critics-circle-on-wendy-donigers-the-hindus
bookcritics.org
crawl=CC-MAIN-2015-06
31118
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:E2NMLH524HXH6R4VI6BP3NH2N2OVTLAN
<urn:uuid:dfabc963-9b9a-4dc0-b025-06478fbae987>
2015-01-29T04:18:00Z
104.28.24.2
sha1:OTAYXMHRI76XZZSJ36W3S4VOJQHBBI7Y
<urn:uuid:89f6b501-c736-4409-9754-7b8aa39e1e1f>
http://bookcritics.org/blog/archive/statement-by-national-book-critics-circle-on-wendy-donigers-the-hindus
length
response
<urn:uuid:f9dc50fe-20d0-4759-94a5-c433f34c3093>
robots: classic
hostname: ip-10-180-212-252.ec2.internal
software: Nutch 1.6 (CC)/CC WarcExport 1.0
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2015-06
operator: CommonCrawl Admin
description: Wide crawl of the web with URLs provided by Blekko for January 2015
publisher: CommonCrawl
format: WARC File Format 1.0
conformsTo: http://bibnum.bnf.fr/WARC/WARC_ISO_28500_version1_latestdraft.pdf