With some Congress MPs set on getting Arun Shourie's `Worshipping False Gods' banned, it is worth recalling Nehru's views on censorship. The following article was written in March 1929:HUMAN nature is notoriously perverse. One has but to forbid a thing or taboo it to make it attractive.

And out of the fear of taboo and its fascination arises the eternal conflict in man, the age-long struggle to escape from the wiles of the evil one. But, alas, escape is difficult, for Satan peeps in at every corner and beckons to the unwary, and perhaps even more so to those who have been forewarned.

Even saints are not beyond his reach, for legend tells us that the holy rishis were sorely tempted by the apsaras of Indra's court, and all the great ones of the earth have had to go through the slippery valley of temptation.

On this conflict the scientists of the modern age have built the structure of psychoanalysis and we are told that all the ills that flesh is heir to arise from it.What then is to be done? Is evil to be allowed to flourish unchecked lest the very checking of it increase its fascination? For, undoubtedly, the sins of this world would lose half their flavour if they were not forbidden.

It may be that their chief attraction lies not in them but in the red livery that society makes them put on. Discard the livery and see them for what they are worth -- naked and unbeautiful and unattractive. But it is not easy to do away with the livery and its fascination. Centuries of taboo have engraved it on our minds and hearts and only a long and laborious course of instruction can right our perspective...But let us leave these high problems to philosophers and psychoanalysts and the like. I am concerned at present with the banning of books.

The papers have recently announced that the Viceroy or the Home Member or the Governor-General and his whole Council put together have prescribed a recent addition to the `Today and Tomorrow' series. I have a soft corner for this series and... I am afraid I am a little prejudiced against the Viceregal crowd. My sympathies were therefore entirely with the book without knowing in the least what it contained.

With the perversity of human nature to which was added the perversity of the Indian politician I determined to read the book in case chance threw it in my way. Subsequent researches, however, led me to the discovery that the book was largely a record of the adventures of the author in the brothels of Calcutta and from his ripe experience garnered in these surroundings he had judged India and prophesied about her future.

He informs us that he encountered honourable members of Council there. Perhaps his experiences were confined to the pre-reform days; otherwise he might have encountered even bigger fry. For, may we whisper it, those whom viceroys and governors delight to honour are seldom known for anything except ignorance and incompetence.

Presumably, the government has banned the book to protect the good name of India. There was I believe a cry for the banning of Katherine Mayo's Mother India also. But I must confess that I see no logic or sense in this suppression of books. From the larger point of view I do not believe in the official censoring or proscription of books in any country... But even apart from this, if India is to be protected from the evil effects of the book it should be proscribed in other countries.

No one in India is likely to be misled by a journalist's account of Calcutta brothels...It is dangerous power in the hands of a government: the right to determine what shall be read and what shall not. And it almost always fails to achieve its object.

Those who wish to do so can usually get hold of the proscribed book. In India the power is likely to be misused and has been misused a hundred times. We have to be careful therefore lest one right use of the power is held to justify its misuse on scores of occasions.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.