Freedom finetuned

BOOKS: Not just another award

Freedom of expression is a vexed issue at the best of times. What's "freedom" to one is "demonisation" to another. What's "protest" to another is "incitement to violence" to yet another. Oh dear. Book publishers, according to Dina N Malhotra, president emeritus, the Federation of Indian Publishers (FIP), have to watch the blurry borders of self expression all the more self-responsibly, and so it's about time books on the very business of publishing came to be honoured.

Thus has the FIP instituted a new set of awards for "books on books". Among the winners, just announced, are Girja Kumar's Books On Trial, Usha Rajagopalan's Get Published and Malhotra's own Dare To Publish.

For most of his life, Malhotra has been a revolutionary of the written word as a book publisher, having pioneered the paperback in India (in the heady years after independence when cash was the constraint) with a price-point gambit of one rupee per copy.

As an author now, his book exhorts people to speak up. "If there's an inner voice to write something, the writer should not desist," he says, "Take the risk." The awards, he adds, aim to support the individual writer's courage of conviction, no matter what.

Ah, but the borders of what may peacefully be said are still under negotiation as thoughts on freedom evolve. Indeed. Writers must not break the acceptable canons of law, says Malhotra, be it copyright, decency or any other. Good sense must prevail. No false tarring, no character assassination, and no suffocation of anyone's social or economic survival space.