The Indian state banned Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses in 1988 and 27 years later film exhibitors ruled out the screening of Parzania in Gujarat. In both cases it was feared that an otherwise creative work might enrage political passions, cause law and order problems, lead to the destruction of private and public property. What on earth, defenders of censorship can ask, is wrong with this? Individuals, howsoever creative, sometimes need to be curtailed in the interests of the public good. Reportedly activists of the Bajrang Dal warned owners of cinema houses in Gujarat that any decision on whether the film on the human consequences of post-Godhra riots should be screened, should keep in mind the interests of the state. That the theatre owners’ decision is prompted by commerce more, and by considerations of ethics less, is not as important as the basic question: why is censorship of a book, a film, a play, or a painting wrong, if the ban serves a larger cause?

We can only answer this question when we ask the reverse question: Why is censorship wrong? What does censorship do to the authors of a text? At an obvious level, censorship denies the author the basic right to freedom of expression. Human beings have the right to articulate their opinions, and give form to their creativity, their notions of how things are and how they should be. This is what being human means — to reflect on what it means to belong to society, to critique social practices, to dream of a desired society and to give expression to these yearnings. I may not agree with the precise way in which you frame your opinion or your creativity. But as the philosopher Voltaire put it, ‘I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it’. Censorship denies basic rights to the creator of the text, and thereby the right to be human.

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