Banned: Bangladeshis, bhoots and butlers

Speaking Volumes

Taslima Nasreen and the Dhaka courts are doing the old two-step tango this week. It's a familiar process: Nasreen publishes a book, someone files a complaint (the favourite charges being that it might cause communal riots or that it's 'vulgar'), the courts ban the book.

It happened most famously with Lajja in 1994, when threats by Muslim fundamentalists forced Nasreen into exile. It happened again with Aamar Meyerbala and Utal Hawa, and surprise, surprise, no sooner had the next volume of her autobiography, Ka, begun ringing up brisk sales than it was placed on the banned list.

This time it's leading writer Syed Shamsul Haque who has filed a defamation suit for $ 1.7 million, alleging that Nasreen has tarnished his reputation. He has cited a passage in which Nasreen claims that he took two women to a small guesthouse, and was seen throwing up drunkenly the next day. Though it isn't part of the suit, Ka (which stands for the first letter of the Bengali alphabet) also includes Nasreen's account of how she fended off Haque's sexual advances.

I have always taken a clear stand on Nasreen's writing: she does it very badly, using the language in the same manner that a physically un-cordinated primate might employ a blunt axe, but she has a right to do it all the same. What seems to offend most people is that she tells the truth, vulgar and obscene though the truth might be, in a manner that they don't expect from a "woman writer".

(Women writers, of course, being genteel souls who must be encouraged to write more about rainbows and kittens, and who are known for their ability to gloss over the intimate details of their lives in Barbara Cartland style, with a series of ... ellipses indicating all.)

What really bothers me about the Bangladesh ban (and the pusillanimous reaction of Calcutta in following suit, unasked, in frantically yanking copies of Nasreen's book from the stores) is that it's so predictable.

In the same week that Ka was banned, several other bodies contemplated or enforced far more unusual bans. I urge those courts in Dhaka to use their imagination, instead of encouraging sales of Nasreen's feminist but turgid writings in such an unabashedly partisan fashion.

In Florida, Patrick Smith's A Land Remembered might be banned from classrooms because of its use of the 'N word'. The sensitivity to the 'n word' runs so high in the US today that this column wouldn't dare to use it, for fear of being spammed out of existence: we will merely mention that the word in question might rhyme with 'trigger'.

It was felt that a teacher had crossed the line by reading the word aloud when she was reading a section from the book. The debate now rages over a central issue: it is apparently acceptable for an author to use the 'N word' in its historical context, but someone should be responsible for ensuring that the word is never spoken aloud.

Perhaps future copies of the book will be sold with a free minder alongside, whose duties will include leaping up and clapping a hand across the mouth of any person who appears to be on the verge of reading aloud a passage containing the offending word.

In Malaysia, ghost stories and tales of the supernatural will be banned in future, which might impact Stephen King's sales fairly seriously in the area. A Deputy Home Minister was charged with the task of explaining to the public that its government was seriously concerned with the effect that these "far-fetched tales" might have on impressionable minds. There is as of now a zero tolerance policy towards books that are "calculated to entertain by frightening".

Some SF and most fantasy novels will also fall within the ambit of the ban, but Harry Potter, for all its magic and mean wizards, is exempted. The official reason is that the Potter series is deemed to be 'benign'; my guess is that even in the august halls of Malaysian government, Rowling has a small fan following.

The Malaysian media and publishing industry clearly doesn't exert the same force as their counterparts in the UK. Buckingham Palace had contemplated asking for a ban on Paul Burrell's what-the-butler-saw memoirs.

The legal reason for any possible ban would include the letters between Prince Philip and Princess Diana ""letters that are in Burrell's possession. The Palace may have been able to make an argument to the effect that these were private letters, not to be published by an individual who wasn't directly concerned with them, but better sense prevailed.

When I say 'better sense', what I mean is that someone pointed out to the Palace that any attempt to ban the book would undoubtedly translate into an even greater media feeding frenzy "" and of course, it would fuel book sales.

The Palace found itself understandably reluctant to give Burrell's publicity department extra assistance, and is now reaping its reward: the fuss over Burrell's book is dying down in the light of the new scandal hovering over Prince Charles and his choice of bedmates.

Over in Egypt, they're following a bizarre debate on the question of obscenity. The Al-Azhar University banned a book of poetry called Commandments of Love for Women on the grounds that the book was an open invitation to obscenity.

It has offended apparently by suggesting that women should surrender themselves "without shame" and "with passion" to their lovers "" precisely the kind of twisted logic that makes the general public fear for the shrivelled love lives of the men behind the ban, but that's another issue. Poet Ahmad Shahawi says he will defy the edict "" the book according to him combines Koranic verses with his own prescriptions to women about love and other passions.

What I admire is the high levels of imagination that have gone into each of these proposed or perpetrated bans. It takes a lot of creativity to offend Islamic scholars with verses from the Koran; it takes some flair to contemplate banning a butler's reminiscences of his employers; and it takes chutzpah to come up with a ban on ghostly tales.

And all that Bangladesh can do is come up with the same tired response: ban Taslima Nasreen. Surely my brethren in Dhaka have more vision than this!

nilroy@lycos.com