Publisher says ‘intolerant and restrictive’ Indian law forced it to withdraw book on Hinduism

NEW DELHI – Penguin India publishing house says it did its best to defend an American author’s religious history against objections from a conservative Hindu group but was forced by “intolerant and restrictive” Indian laws to remove the book from sale.

The publisher’s decision this week to pull and pulp all copies of historian Wendy Doniger’s “The Hindus: An Alternative History” shocked writers and intellectuals in India.

Doniger has defended Penguin India in a statement, saying the publisher had fought for four years against a lawsuit by the Hindu group, which objected to the book’s describing certain Hindu myths as fiction.

Penguin India said in a statement released Friday that it was obliged “to respect the laws of the land … however intolerant and restrictive those laws may be.”