Ban

If you could permanently ban a word from general usage, which one would it be? Why?

I would ban the idea to ban, meaning, the word ‘ban’ , from general usage, if I could do itThat’s one it would be. Why? Because banning is undemocratic (though no democratic government has been liberal enough to stop banning one or the other word, book or something)

Former PM, erudite scholar, there cannot be any other PM like him in future, knew 36 languages, could speak all Southern languages, my language Marathi, Hindi, English and several European languages fluently, was himself a great writer. Salman Rushdie’s book was banned in India. I suppose it still is. I’m not sure. He read Rushdie’s novel ‘The Moore’s Last Sigh’ in a plain journey and lifted the ban on the book.

The first PM Pt Nehru called Aubrey Menon personally and explained to him, made an appeal to him saying that Indian readers are not mature enough still to understand novel as a literary work and will not accept his novel in which there was some question on Seeta. He banned the book unwillingly.

In UK Lady Chatterley’s Lover, great novel of D H Lawrence was banned when it was published in France. The British Police had already issued warrant against him. Bertrand Russell, the great Philosopher fought the case on the side of Penguin, taking F R Leavis and others to argue in court. Penguin won the case, ban was lifted and that one book made huge business, more than all other novels together but Lawrence didn’t live to see the success or to use a pound from that income.

I have narrated this Lawrence story to students and have written in letters to people who were close to me to prove my point that ideas of morality held by moral police in family and society are totally corrupt, senseless, lopsided and narrowed by customs and traditions. People are koopmanduk, frogs in the pond whose world is small. Each one’s world is as big as his brain, as they say.

I could not change anyone by writing fifty fifty pages letters because people take easy things and it requires highest intellectual energy to go against social norms and to oppose the concept of ban. It’s a coincidence that same Penguin in India is in limelight for withdrawing the publication of another book that frightened rulers. That is almost banned before publishing.

To ban is to satiate some section of the society and suppress the other section. This is wrong. I would ban the word ban itself.

Image : FB Post screenshot of my friend Dr Sumathi Padmanabhan who teaches in a college in TN. Oscar Wilde’s quotation that Akka (I call her that way, sister) has given here best suits this post.

Post link https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1CFdWU6W29/?mibextid=wwXIfr