Can we ever narrativise without moralising?” was Hayden White’s famous question on the writing of history. All history is a tale told, and there is always a rationale of choice that organises random facts into a meaningful narrative. When American historian James Laine wrote Shivaji: Hindu King of Islamic India, he was trying to excavate the origin and growth of the Shivaji legend, not attempting the authorised biography. A distinction utterly lost on the upholders of Maratha heroism who ran riot and the administration that banned the book. Now, the Supreme Court has suggested that Laine simply amend the offending bits to sort out the issue. If there is a moral to this story, it is that freedom of expression is increasingly a mere fiction in our country.

Laine’s book enraged the Sambhaji brigade, who a few years back rampaged through the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute in Pune, destroying rare manuscripts and harassing scholars in a sustained campaign against Laine, alleging affront to Maratha pride and winning a ban on the book. Again and again, our intellectual and creative freedoms have been choked by literal-minded bullies. And as the Laine episode reveals, one by one every institution has flopped down without a fight.

This is why the court’s politely framed choice to Laine worries us. We realise that the courts have, to their credit, even in the Laine case come in on the side of freedom of expression. But this kind of advice, in the current environment, could educate us to censor ourselves. It encourages the steady coarsening of our political culture that cynically channels popular sentiment for immediate point-scoring. Instead of seeking rational recourse against a nervous, dysfunctional environment where a bunch of hoodlums can dictate how history is taught, we are being asked to retreat rather than invite trouble.