Mediaboss Marketing

Is censorship acceptable if it is well-meaning? Can changing the content of a writers or artists work be excused for so-called woke ends? The first few months of 2023 have seen these questions debated as publishers have edited out or rewritten objectionable content from writers as diverse as Enid Blyton and Roald Dahl to P G Wodehouse and Ian Fleming. The debate between morality (or whatever the name given to self-righteous zeal) and free speech will, of course, continue. But the argument for the right to speak and offend has been buttressed by its most prominent champion.

You have exhausted your monthly limit of free stories.

To continue reading,simply register or sign in

Subscribe to read on

Select your plan

All-Access

Digital Only

This premium article is free for now.

Register to continue reading this story.

This content is exclusive for our subscribers.

Subscribe to get unlimited access to The Indian Express exclusive and premium stories.

This content is exclusive for our subscribers.

Subscribe now to get unlimited access to The Indian Express exclusive and premium stories.

The idea that James Bond could be made politically correct is almost comical, Salman Rushdie said, while accepting the Freedom to Publish honour at the British Book Awards earlier this week. Rushdie mentioned state censorship in several non-Western countries, including India, as a problem. However, in the West, things are no better and the attack on free expression is not coming directly from the state: here in the US, I have to look at the extraordinary attack on libraries and books for children in schools; the attack on the idea of libraries themselves. Its quite remarkably alarming, and we need to be very aware of it and fight against it very hard. Rushdies prescription is as simple as it is unheeded: Dont try and remake yesterdays work in the light of todays attitudes.

Last year, Rushdie was nearly killed for words he wrote. It is no small thing, then, that he sees the threats to speech today coming from attempts to bowdlerise works of writers like Dahl and Fleming by those who claim that political correctness is an excuse to censor. His words and the price he has paid for them hold a lesson for those who believe that they are entitled to mutilate works of art: Free speech is worth protecting, even and especially in the face of claims to virtue.

The Indian Express (P) Ltd

First published on: 19-05-2023 at 06:33 IST

Read the original:
Express View: Rushdie isnt woke - The Indian Express