Penguin Moves Towards Crimes Against India

Some cheap writers who are ballooned up by European publications write cheap books which famous book houses publish for other considerations. These writers, some of them never travelled in India and some others having only once or twice travelled through India, will dare write books on Indian life and think they have become authorities on India matters. We can understand books written by writers like Jules Verne and Romaine Rolland touching India. But what can one say when Indian lives are the least understood by some writers and famous book houses publish their irrelevant works? For example, let us take the matter of time as viewed by Indians which few foreign writers have understood well. Europeans have a machine-made time in which minutes and seconds are very important but Indians generally have only a cosmic time- there are only morning, noon and night. Waiting is a torture for a European, waiting for something in a government office or waiting in a railway station for the train to arrive. But for an Indian, waiting is pleasure. If a train is announced to be very late, he will purchase a news paper, spread it on the platform and sleep to his relish. Do not think these observations are mine; they are Aldous Huxley’s, another close observer of true Indian life. Without learning any of such national traits as these, some writers write about India and some book houses publish and try to sell them in India. The writer would think he or she has become an India Authority by overnight! India is a land of patience, tolerance and sympathy. For so many decades, the people of India have tolerated such inferior writers but the present incident only reveals that such times are past. India through centuries has served as the consoling nation for human souls from everywhere but it also has marked on its national symbol that ‘Truth Alone Will Triumph’. If a writer tells untruth, do not think Indians will let it go. It is not a question of the image of their gods that is understood to be tarnished here but the loftiness of ideals which are represented by those images. To understand India, first look at family relations in India, where, from grand fathers and grand mothers to tiny babies live together in one family, and also see the respect each family member shows to his seniors and elders, which is a national trait in Pakistan, Ceylon, Burma, Tibet, Nepal and China also- in fact an Asian trait. They won’t even sit before elders. How many European writers have recognized this and written accordingly? Divorces are rare in India and marriages are for life; how can the fourth wives living with fifth husbands of Europe understand this life style? For an Indian, man and family relations is important. How can European writers who abandoned their husbands and children for dogs understand this culture and do justice to India in their writings? Penguin, started by India’s famous writer and statesman V.K.Krishna Menon, is moving towards greater crimes against India.

News: Penguin blames Indian law for Doniger's book 'The Hindus' removal. 17 February 2014.