There was a knock on my door around 9.30, one evening in June of 1980. My husband was out of town, the servant on leave and two teenage sons expected back any moment from the movies. I was alone getting dinner ready. The knock was followed by an impatient ring. Must be the boys, I thought and went to the door, leaving the vegetables simmering on the gas.
Two grown men stood outside. Not my boys. Surprised by the sudden late night callers, I was about to inform them of my husband's unavailability; when one of them rasped, “Mridula Garg!”
“Yes.”
“You wrote this book?” he asked waving my novel Chittcobra at me.
“Why, yes,” I exclaimed quite elated to have my book flashed at me by total strangers. Ah, the ego of a writer!
“Police,” said he waving something else now. His identity card, it turned out to be. “We are here to arrest you.”
“What?”
“Arrest,” he repeated; then translated it into Hindi for my benefit. “ Giraftar .”
“I know what arrest means,” I said testily, “But what for?”
“The book.” He waved it at me again. “Pages 110-112 are obscene.”
“They most certainly are not!” I said so vehemently that he amended his statement to, “Legally actionable under The Obscenity Act (U/S 292 IPC)”.
Fat lot of difference that made! Obscene, my book! That too, Chittcobra !
I recalled how the editor of the famous Hindi weekly Saptahik Hindustan had taken me to task for not dwelling more graphically on the sexual act. That after all, he had espoused, was the essence of modernity; the more detailed and earthy the description, the better. Jainendra, a doyen of Hindi literature, had declared that while reading the book one ceased to be of the body. “ Sharirikta men nahin rehta ”, were his exact words.
I also relived the ecstatic state in which I had written the novel completing it in 26 days flat. The three pages found “legally actionable” dealt with the anguish of a woman, who is a mechanical participant in the sex act with her husband. It was imperative to give a graphic picture to delineate the essential dichotomy between the mind and the body during the intercourse and orgasm. But this very graphic treatment robbed it of erotica, rendering it tedious perhaps but certainly not titillating. How in the name of literature could it be obscene! I could not decide whether to laugh my head off at the idiocy or be violently angry.
“What's obscene about them?” I snapped.
“We don't know,”' moaned the watchdogs of public morality.
“What about scores of other novels which deal with such subjects?”
“We don't know.”
“Of course you don't. You don't read books I suppose.”
“No,” said the one holding the book aloft but the other looked rather abashed.
"Who are you?" I asked on an impulse.
“Another Sub-inspector. Usually two of us go together to make an arrest. It's safer.”
“For whom?" I burst out laughing, "The police or the accused?”
“You don't know how hard it is to arrest a woman when alone.”
“I am alone,” I said on another impulse.
They blanched and looked at each other.
“Oh my God!” I screamed and ran into the kitchen. They followed me, cajoling, “Please, please there is no cause for alarm.”
“It is easy for you to say,” I said. “The vegetable is burnt to cinders and the boys will be home any minute.”
“We are sorry. But we have a duty to do.”
“So have I. I'll boil some potatoes in the pressure cooker. That’s the quickest thing I can think of. Can you of anything else?”
“No,” they said hastily. I busied myself with the potatoes while they looked at each other for a long while in silence.
Then they broke it in unison, quite like Tweedledee and Tweedledum, to say, “Madam, could you kindly get a witness so we could arrest you.”
“Arrest…” said I trying to open the cooker.
“ Giraftar, ” they clarified.
“I know the meaning but… how do you intend to do it?”
They went back to looking at each other.
“Why don't you go to the living room and work it out while I make some tea. I am in urgent need of it. Want some?” I said.
“No,” said one.
“No-no,” said the other.
“We have come a long distance, though,” amended the first one.
“And straight from office,” added the other.
“That’s settled then. I'll make three cups. Wait in the living room.”
They filed out but I could hear them talking in agitated whispers.
By the time I went in with the tea, my two boys had returned so we were quite a party in there. “Who are they?” asked my 16-year-old.
“Policemen.”
“Why here?”
“They have come to arrest me.”
“Have you killed someone?” asked the 14-year-old.
“No, written a book.”
“Not one, you have written a dozen. But they can't arrest you for that. What about freedom of expression.” Alas our schools insist on harping on democracy and all that it entails.
“Apparently they can. They find it obscene.”
“Which one?”
“ Chittcobra .”
At that both of them jumped up. “Are they out of their meagre senses?” They must have looked menacing because the guardians of the law cringed as they sang in unison, “Now-now-now. Please get a witness.”
“Here,” I pointed to my sons, “are my witnesses.”
“No, they are not adults.”
“Nor are those who find literature obscene,” said my sons.
“Please,” they pleaded, “Get an adult.”
"Ok," I said," I'll call my sister."
“No!” They almost shrieked, “Not another woman. Get a man.”
“Why?”
“Please. It's safer.”
“What are you afraid of?”
“Assault and battery. You complaining of them. We mean, women say things and the courts believe them. Madam, please appreciate our position. We do not want to arrest you. In fact our superior officer had been after us for a year to get him a copy of your book but we kept stalling. We know it is in its third edition but whenever he went to a shop, it was out of print, sold out you know. Finally he got a copy from the Parliament library and here we are,” recited one.
Chittcobra was first published in 1979, a year before this legally actionable visitation.
“Much against our wishes,” the other joined the duet, “You are wrong about our not reading books. At least I do. I have read some of your stories and don't like the idea of arresting you. But we are helpless. Please get a witness.”
“I have nothing against you personally," I said," But do tell me, how's an arrest made?”
This time they looked at each other for full one minute in pregnant silence. Then one of them cleared his throat and intoned, “Well…actually… we do have …er…the discretion to give you bail.”
“Here and now?”
“Er… yes… just get an adult male to stand surety and we will bail you. After that when the case comes to court, it is between you and the magistrate.”
“What about the prosecuting authority? Who is it, anyway?”
“The Delhi Administration,” I was told.
The adult male was secured, the surety duly signed and I was released on bail. All in one evening. The whole thing had been so farcical that I did not expect it to actually come up in court.
But there I was wrong. It did and dragged on for two years. During that time the sale of the book was suspended, the stocks frozen. I am now convinced that it was one of the objects of the exercise. The other was to thwart my creative work by harassing me and causing me mental anguish. Books and writers are persecuted not to stop people from reading a particular book but to stop writers from writing freely.
Once the summons were served I had to, perforce, grow serious about the matter. I was also curious. I needed answers not for myself but the entire literary community.
If they considered a part of the book objectionable or legally actionable why did they not ban it instead of instituting arrest against the author?
How was any work singled for the honour (sic) of action when there were hundreds of works which could fall under the purview of “legally actionable?”
Both questions were answered by the eminent lawyer L.M, Singhvi whom I consulted later. They were eye-openers indeed!
If a book is banned, he told me, the author invariably goes to court and it is generally revoked specially in case of a literary work of unquestioned merit. He or she is thus spared any real harassment. Though the police have the right to grant bail, the accused is not likely to know of it unless informed by the arresting officers and they are under no legal compulsion to do so.
I recalled that they had come late on Friday evening before a second Saturday. So had my Tweedledee and Tweedledum not been as considerate as they were, they could have hauled me to jail or hawalaat, as no doubt they would have translated for my benefit, with no recourse to bail till Monday morning. That indeed had been the design of the ‘superior officer’, so adroitly foiled by them.
As for the second question, the answer was murkier. The procedure was that action was taken only when a complaint was lodged with the administration. The rest was silence for the administrative officers could not be expected to read, certainly not literature!
It became clear once I tackled the Delhi administration that a complaint had indeed been lodged by a fellow author and publisher with the connivance of a police officer. The main purpose was to force a reduction in the burgeoning sale of the book. Remember police action meant the sealing of stocks and suspension of the sale. Mr. Singhvi half jokingly suggested that I request the authorities to withdraw the arrest order and instead ban the book. Then we could lodge a complaint against it and be on solid ground, as the plaintiff rather than the defendant. Off the record, he did not dismiss but bolstered my view that, I was much more likely to be convicted because I was a woman and perceived as a keeper of public morality. It soon ceased to be a joke.
The Delhi Administration was shocked to learn that such an action had been instituted and promised to withdraw it immediately. I have no doubt it had every intention to do so. But whoever heard of anything being actually done by a government authority just because it intended to do it. Almost every month I found the police at my doorstep while the authorities assured me that the case had been withdrawn. The case marched merrily on even as the Chief Secretary remained both contrite and calm. I soon learnt that oversight, misplacement, inadvertence, non-conveyance of the order to the right person; were all fancy names for inaction. Their eagerness to act and inability to act in time were so perfectly balanced that the matter was in a state of perpetual suspension. This went on two whole years. The sale of the book was suspended, round one to them. But I refused to grant them the satisfaction of preventing me from writing. I was already working on another novel Anitya , and it was published in 1980 itself.
To set the record straight for posterity I have to add here that before the arrest was made, in 1979 itself, a leading Hindi weekly Sarika had taken out the three so-called legally actionable pages, published them along with a letter calling them obscene and invited “similar” letters. The tirade had gone on for full one year with the literary community having a whale of a time. It so happened that while my male and female literary colleagues were regaling themselves at my expense, I was fully absorbed in writing a historical-cum-political novel, Anitya . Compounding the female sin!
The episode drew to a lingering close in December 1982, the night before it was scheduled to come to court, with L.M Singhvi petitioning the then Lt. Governor of Delhi, Jagmohan to withdraw it. That he took action late at night, to stop the case from coming to court at 9.00 a.m. the next morning, speaks volume for his democratic belief in freedom of expression.
One may well treat the whole episode as a farce now that it is over but it raises very serious questions as relevant now in 2010 as they were in 1980's.
How is it befitting of a democracy to entertain complaints that smack of professional vendetta and act upon them?
What kind of law allows unlettered sentinels of law to indulge in witch hunting of authors of literary works, as and when whim or fancy takes them?
It was because of the fair play and gentlemanliness of the much maligned sub inspectors of police that I was spared deeper humiliation. But the question is why were two male officers sent to arrest a woman and not at least one female officer?
Why did a large part of the literary community choose to remain a silent spectator of this sordid saga? Was it not because the hunted was a young woman who refused to hide behind a male patron?
As I said this article was published in the Sunday edition of Patriot in 1985. It is now 2010. Twenty five years have gone by. During this time I have come to believe firmly that their silence in 1979 was a precursor of and partly responsible for the latter day witch-hunting of eminent artists, theatre persons and writers, in our country. We are quick to lay the blame at the right wing door. But the rot had started much earlier and in the bastions of the so called left. I’ll be failing in my duty if I do not name the very few people who had come out against the suppression of the freedom of expression and witch hunting of a literary work. They were two journalists - Dinesh Dwivedi, editor of the small literary magazine Punashch and Itarasi, MP; and K.B Goel, editor of Patriot , Sunday magazine Delhi - and five writers - Yogesh Gupt, Veerendra Saxena, Manjul Bhagat, Jainendra and Mrinal Pande. Seven Musketeers instead of three! But worth 700 of those who either chose to remain silent or joined in the fun at that time.
I am amazed that even today not a single defaulter of that era is ready to take the blame for it. They continue to pretend that nothing ever happened! A fine example of a post-modern tragic-comedy isn't it? I’m sure writers and artists will vouch for the fact that neither the literary establishment nor any political party has ever been a respecter of ideology where women or writers for that matter are concerned.
