Banning and Censoring Books - Dinner Table Digest № 45
The Dinner Table Digest is an intermittent collection of interesting material from around the internet, curated by Peter Thurley at Dinner Table Don'ts. Subscribe today!
This Digest is themed around the practice of restricting information to individuals by changing or banning the kinds of reading material they can consume. From the cruel practice of banning books for incarcerated individuals, to the changing of the history curriculum in India, to Florida governor Ron DeSantis’ crusade against 2SLGBT+ and racialized people in his state, there is far too much content like this to report on.
Sections: Prisons / India / Author John Green / Florida
The Cruel Practice of Banning Books Behind Bars - Nazish Dholakia - Vera Magazine
Banning access to books in prison is, on my view, cruel and unusual punishment.
The bans, including Iowa’s, are based on an unsubstantiated narrative that books may contain contraband (which is also the explanation given for recent bans on mail). Mascioli said some BOP facilities briefly implemented similar restrictions in 2017, only to walk them back when the Washington Post pressed for further information. She fears that this renewed trickle signals that more facilities will adopt similar policies as time goes on.
“How much of the actual contraband coming in do books account for?” Mascioli said. “When we call and ask about these policies, that's what [corrections officers] say. But I haven't seen anything from the Bureau of Prisons backing this up.” …
. When the Washington State Department of Corrections (DOC) pushed out a ban on used books, in March 2019, it did so quietly. Books to Prisoners staff only realized when they started receiving rejection notices from prisons. Some digging uncovered a memo, posted on the DOC’s website, that cited a rise in contraband as the reason for the rule change.
Author John Green Talks about Faith and his Banned Books
Rewriting India’s History Through School Textbooks - Seema Chishti - New Lines Magazine
We go now to India, where the Hindu Nationalist BJP government of Narendra Modi is actively working on re-writing Indian textbooks, writing out the stories of many of the minorities who make up Indian society, including Muslims, who Hindu Nationalists consider to be invaders, and the Dalits, the so-called ‘Untouchables Caste.’ I mentioned in the last Digest that Hindu Nationalism holds that the Indo-Aryan peoples (and their Hindu religion) are Indigenous to north India, despite significant evidence that suggests that they migrated from the central Asian steppes.
Ever since the BJP came to power in India, there has been a major thrust to rewrite history — starting with school textbooks — in order to promote a monocultural view about the country’s past. As Mohan Bhagwat, head of the right-wing Hindu nationalist organization Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), remarked in an interview in January, the BJP portrays its society as being “at war for a thousand years.” Protests and demonstrations against these attempts have not enjoyed wide public support, or at least have not brought people out into the streets. Some opposition parties have made noises, especially those on the left of the political spectrum, but even they perhaps realize that falsehoods in textbooks are unlikely to constitute an issue of mass interest. No large-scale public mobilization has been witnessed to date.
Education in India is usually meant to be handled by state governments. But the central government in Delhi can also set the tone and decide key things which matter across the country. Significant changes were previously made to textbooks when the BJP got their first prime minister elected, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who held office between 1998 and 2004. Between 2002 and 2004, major scientific discoveries were attributed to the Vedic civilization in National Council of Educational Research and Training textbooks. Furthermore, “glorious ancient India” was described as a time when the only people living there were Indigenous and of the Aryan race. However, this is directly contradicted by genetic, linguistic and other material evidence. Efforts to showcase the past as shining and monolithic are countered by historical studies that have proven that India has been a crucible for many cultures. In the words of the Indian journalist and author Tony Joseph, it was a “pizza” with several layers of toppings added over the centuries. …
Historians say that, if what has been taught in these [private Hindu] schools were to be replicated in state schools, it would “amount to replacing history with mythology.” This means teaching many obscurantist beliefs as facts. In “The Saffronisation of Indian Textbooks (2002–2018),” Caitlin Westerfield writes that, in the state of Rajasthan, a meeting in July 2015 was held to list precise instructions and decisions about what the textbooks should contain, which included a chapter on Vedic mathematics for every class, a focus on “Indian culture” while teaching history, and science explained through stories from Indian mythology. The banned practice of Sati, in which widows immolated themselves with their husband’s bodies during cremation, is described in glowing terms. Government schemes and initiatives are taught as necessarily leading to good outcomes. Books on practically every subject are trying to instill nationalism and unquestioning respect for the armed forces.
Moreover, to minimize the role of Muslims in the anticolonial movement or to portray the rule of Muslim monarchs in a bad light, the medieval period of Indian history has been curtailed. Several pages on the Delhi sultanate — which was ruled by many dynasties, including the Mamluks, Tughlaqs, Khilji and Lodi, and the Mughal empire — are cut out of the books. Art and the architectural heritage of medieval India; temples of the south Indian Chola kingdom, undoubtedly a high point of peninsular India; mosques of Delhi sultans, Mughals and Deccan sultans; and the gardens and forts built then, which bear testimony to the accomplishments of that period — all have been deleted.
Ron DeSantis’s book ban mania targets Jodi Picoult - The Washiongton Post
I don’t have a lot to say about this by way of introduction, except to say that Ron DeSantis is likely to be the next Republican candidate for President. That should worry us all.
Numerous titles by well-known authors such as Jodi Picoult, Toni Morrison and James Patterson have been pulled from library shelves. The removal list includes Picoult’s novel “The Storyteller” about the granddaughter of a Holocaust survivor who meets an elderly former SS officer. It contains some violent scenes told in flashbacks from World War II and an assisted suicide.
“Banning ‘The Storyteller’ is shocking, as it is about the Holocaust and has never been banned before,” Picoult told us in an email.
“Martin County is the first to ban twenty of my books at once,” Picoult said, slamming such bans as “a shocking breach of freedom of speech and freedom of information.” A coastal county in the southeastern part of the state, Martin County is heavily Republican.
Picoult said she’s puzzled by the ban, because she does not “write adult romance,” as objections filed against her books claimed.
“Most of the books pulled do not even have a single kiss in them,” Picoult told us. “They do, however, include gay characters, and issues like racism, disability, abortion rights, gun control, and other topics that might make a kid think differently from their parents.”
“We have actual proof that marginalized kids who read books about marginalized characters wind up feeling less alone,” Picoult continued. “Books bridge divides between people. Book bans create them.”
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