Words Exist Beyond The Perishable Matrix of Ink And Paper

When Satan asks the Master, a persecuted novelist in Stalin바카라�s USSR, to show him the manuscript of his novel on Pontius Pilate, the latter replies that he has burnt it. 바카라�Forgive me, I can바카라�t believe it,바카라� Satan replies. 바카라�It can바카라�t be so. Manuscripts don바카라�t burn.바카라�
 
바카라�Manuscripts don바카라�t burn바카라� 바카라� this sentence from Russian novelist Mikhail Bulgakov바카라�s The Master & Margarita has gained wide circulation as an anti-censorship slogan since a truncated version of the novel was first published in Moscow in 1966-67. The line has deep autobiographical resonances for Bulgakov, who had in fact consigned to flames an early draft of his novel. The Master & Margarita, in which Satan and his entourage arrive in a fanatically atheist Bolshevik-ruled Moscow, was never published in Bulgakov바카라�s lifetime.
 
Two recent events reminded me of this line and prompted me to find my dog-eared copy of The Master & Margarita.
 
The first was the recent decision of global retail giant Amazon to shut down Indian publishing company Westland, which has sent shockwaves through India바카라�s literary community and sparked much speculation about the reason for this sudden decision. The absence of any explanation from Amazon, which acquired Westland from the Tata group in 2016, has fed the wildfires of speculation, especially on social media.
 
Some, like Durba Chattaraj, teacher of writing and anthropology at Ashoka University, have suggested that it might have something to do with the list of titles put out in recent years by one of Westland바카라�s imprints, Context. 바카라�Westland has also published, in the last five years, a series of acclaimed, carefully-researched, and hard-hitting books critiquing India바카라�s current regime. No unsupported hatchet jobs these,바카라� Chattaraj writes in her piece, 바카라�Author바카라�s lament: Why Amazon closing down Westland feels like we바카라�re living in a Mohsin Hamid novel바카라� for Scroll.in. These include Christophe Jaffrelot바카라�s Modi바카라�s India, Revati Laul바카라�s The Anatomy of Hate, KS Komireddi바카라�s Malevolent Republic, Nalin Mehta바카라�s The New BJP, and Josy Joseph바카라�s The Silent Coup, among others.
 
Not everyone, however, agrees with this. Novelist and biographer Deepanjana Pal, in a piece on her website titled 바카라�Westland/Wasteland바카라� argues: 바카라�If the shutdown was on ideological grounds, just getting rid of Context 바카라� one of Westland바카라�s imprints 바카라� would have done the job. Lose Context바카라�s list and Westland comes across as a vanilla-saffron confectionery, filled with genres and authors that are 24k commercial.바카라� Besides popular writers such as Chetan Bhagat, Anuja Chauhan, Ashwin Sanghi, Westland had also recently published the debut novel of Smriti Irani, the former TV star and current minister of women and child development in Prime Minister Narendra Modi바카라�s government.

The second event that reminded me of Bulgakov바카라�s novel was news from the US, where a school board in Tennessee had banned Art Spiegelman바카라�s graphic novel Maus, about the Holocaust, from its eighth-grade curriculum. Spiegelman depicts the real experience of his Polish Jew grandparents, who survived imprisonment in the notorious concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau, through anthropomorphized animals 바카라� Jews as mice and cats as Nazis. (In Nazi propaganda, Jews were often depicted as rats 바카라� something Colonel Hans Landa, the 바카라�Jew Hunter바카라� in The Inglorious Basterds, also refers to.)
 
Viola Burlew, a graduate student of history at the University of Colorado, who is studying 20th-century comics in relation to gender and censorship, tried to explain why censors love targeting comic books in an article for The Washington Post: 바카라�Censorship has a long history when it comes to the comics industry, with 20th-century critics of comics claiming to protect young readers by censoring comics on the basis of language and imagery. Yet, buzzwords like 바카라�obscenity,바카라� 바카라�nudity바카라� and 바카라�decency바카라� distract from a more sinister argument driving the censorship of comics: that progressive, accessible storytelling is somehow dangerous in the hands of young readers.바카라�
 
The ban has prompted a renewed interest in Maus, with the comic climbing to the top of 바카라� ironically for me 바카라� Amazon바카라�s bestseller lists, as The Guardian reported.
 
What connects the two books in my mind? Surely not Amazon? Or is it the unmistakable stench of censorship?
 
Perhaps nothing more than the cats on their covers. The cover of my edition of The Master & Margarita has a large and sinister black cat 바카라�Behemoth, the anthropomorphized feline in Bulgakov바카라�s novel who is part of Satan바카라�s entourage. On the cover of Maus, the cat is unmistakably Hitler, superimposed on a swastika, looking down menacingly upon a couple of terrified mice.
 
As I placed the two books beside each other on my table, I was reminded immediately of the first time I read them. It was possibly 2006-07, and the Communist Party of India (Marxist)-led Left Front had won the seventh consecutive election to the West Bengal Assembly. Soon after returning to power, the government initiated land acquisition in Nandigram and Singur, villages not too far from Kolkata. The farmers whose land was being acquired opposed the plan, leading to violence. On March 14, 2007, the police opened fire on protesting farmers, killing 14. Waves of violence would follow.
 
I was a second-year student at Jadavpur University바카라�s (JU바카라�s) English department. My feelings towards CPM were ambiguous. I had refused an offer to join the Students바카라� Federation of India, the CPM바카라�s youth wing, and deplored the violence carried out by the party바카라�s feared cadres in the villages. At the same time, I could barely deny the nostalgic appeal of Matryoshka dolls, Progress Publishers books, the hammer-sickle-star graffiti on walls in Kolkata. The Singur-Nandigram incidents 바카라� oh, how far away and forgotten they now seem 바카라� would frame my political consciousness, and change the political landscape of my home state West Bengal, inalterably.
 
But I arrived at Bulgakov through a Bengali writer 바카라� Nabarun Bhattacharya. I had read his novels, Herbert (1994) and Kangal Malshat (2003), while I was still in school. In 2005, just after I had been admitted to JU, the former was adapted into a Bengali film by Suman Mukhopadhyay. Depicting the violent Maoist Naxalbari movement of the Sixties and Seventies, the film was described by the New York Times as 바카라�a mad, messy and frequently amazing epic from India.바카라� The film also starred theatre actor Joyraj Bhattacharjee in the role of Young Herbert. Joyraj 바카라� whom I called Joy-da 바카라� was the director of the first amateur play in which I acted.
 
Nabarun, as is well known, was deeply inspired by Bulgakov. His novels became immensely popular in the post-Singur-Nandigram era because of critique of the Left Front government바카라�s policies. In Kangal Malshat, a gang of underclass, magical creatures called Fyataru, who can take flight by singing the mantra 바카라�fyat fyat shnaai shnaai바카라�, declare war on the West Bengal government. To its credit, the Left Front government had not banned it 바카라� though it was not averse to banning books. It had banned Taslima Nasreen바카라�s Dwikhandito in 2003 바카라� the same year Kangal Malsat was published.
 
My copy of The Master & Margarita was acquired second-hand, from College Street, the famous bookseller바카라�s district in central Kolkata. Over the years, it has travelled with me from Kolkata to Delhi, and now to Sonipat, where I live. It has become dog-eared, its spine bears the marks of a careless reader, and its pages are deeply annotated. I have returned to it over and over again over the past few years, as clouds of censorship and suppression have gathered over us.

 
On the contrary, my copy of Maus remains in mint condition. Not because I haven바카라�t read, but because I have fetishized it a little. I could not buy it for many years because the two-volume edition bears a cover price of £16.99 (about Rs. 1,700 at current exchange rates) 바카라� too much for a poor journalist바카라�s salary. I finally acquired a copy from the Daryaganj book market. It was not a second-hand copy, the name of the previous owner was not scribbled on the front pages. Perhaps some bookseller, going out of business, had disposed of it. Perhaps the publisher had consigned this older edition to be pulped.
 
After Amazon announced that it was shutting down Westland, there was some speculation that its existing titles would be pulped. There is no confirmation of this yet. I reached out to several friends who have books with various imprints of Westland. Most of them were in a state of shock and sorrow and did not want to be quoted for this article. But, they confirmed that they had been told by their editors that the copyright of their books would revert to them in a few months.
 
What will happen to the books themselves? They are likely to go out of circulation, but there are already some efforts to save as many as possible. Novelist Saikat Majumdar, who is also a professor of English and Creative Writing at Ashoka University, announced on social media, that his university바카라�s library will acquire 119 of Westland바카라�s titles.
 
Books burn. Of course, they do. Nazis made bonfires out of them. Manuscripts burn as well. But words are a different matter. They exist beyond the perishable matrix of ink and paper. And, though it is impossible to remain hopeful in our undeniably oppressive times, I can end this rambling piece on a hopeful note. Poet Arjun Rajendran, whose book of poems One Man, Two Executions was published by Context in 2020, tells me that The Quarantine Train, an online collective of poets, is soon hosting a reading by writers published by Westland, on Feb. 12.
 
Perhaps a supportive community of friends and writers is the only antidote to the vagaries of corporate publishing and defence against the boot of censorship blocking out the sun.    

(Uttaran Das Gupta is a New Delhi-based writer and journalist. He has published a novel (Ritual, 2020) and a book of poems (Visceral Metropolis, 2017), and teaches at O P Jindal Global University, Sonipat. Views expressed in this article are personal and may not necessarily reflect the views of Outlook Magazine)