Under pressure by Hindu nationalists, Penguin India yanks US scholar’s religious history
NEW DELHI – Penguin India publishing house has pulled all copies of an American scholar’s narrative history of Hinduism from sale in India and ordered them destroyed as part of a legal settlement with a small Hindu nationalist group.
The group Shiksha Bachao Andolan Samiti, or the Save Education Movement, had objected to religious historian Wendy Doniger’s 2009 book, “The Hindus: An Alternative History” for describing certain religious texts as fictional.
Penguin India said Monday it was ordering all Indian sales of the book halted and all copies pulped. By Thursday, bookstores in the capital of New Delhi were refusing to sell any copies.
The action has stunned many Indian writers and intellectuals, with many worrying it was a sign of growing intolerance of dissent in India.
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