“WHERE they burn books, they will ultimately burn people as well.”

The oft-quoted line from German poet and playwright Henrich Heine’s 1823 play Almansor is engraved on the Bibliothek memorial in the Bebelplatz square in central Berlin, commemorating the Nazi book burning of May 10, 1933, when members of the German Student Union and university professors burnt and destroyed over 25,000 books that they deemed “un-German”. Marxist and Communist literature were one of the prime targets of the state-supported campaign of censorship and cultural destruction by the Nazis. Heine’s works were burnt along with copies of over 4,000 other titles, including those of Karl Marx.

By sending in bulldozers and armed police personnel along with goons and hoodlums to attack bookstalls run by the CPI(M) and other left organisations during the Durga Puja festival in West Bengal, the BJP-RSS repeated what their Nazi forefathers made infamous in the 1930s. Left and progressive bookstalls faced demolition attempts, vandalism, arson and intimidation during the state’s first Sharadotsav under the BJP rule. These attacks strike at the heart of a long-standing cultural tradition of public reading, political debate and the freedom to encounter ideas that challenge those in power.

A CULTURAL TRADITION UNDER ATTACK

The bookstalls run by Left parties and other organisations are not an incidental feature of Bengal’s festive season. It is a tradition dating back to the 1950s when the first festive bookstall was set up by Comrade Muzaffar Ahmad. Stalls with political literature, progressive writing, books on history and society, and works by Marxist thinkers are part and parcel of the festivities and associated cultural activities during the festival, and people all over the state look forward to visiting them. It is this rich tradition that the BJP and RSS are attempting to undermine through political interference, intimidation and rank thuggery.

The target of the Hindutva brigade is the space that these stalls have offered visitors — for conversations, political exchanges and encounters with ideas that challenge the dominant discourse pushed by a media landscape controlled by the corporate-communal nexus. The stalls take ideas beyond universities, classrooms and private libraries to places frequented by one and all. Behind the fig leaf of municipal regulations and permissions, the political intimidation using state and muscle power is an attempt to suppress the right to occupy public space, circulate ideas and participate in the cultural life of society. The aim is to silence ideas that challenge a preferred political and ideological order and impose a narrative by force.

FAHRENHEIT 451, JOSEPH GOEBBELS AND SUVENDU ADHIKARI 

François Truffaut’s 1966 film Fahrenheit 451, based on Ray Bradbury’s novel of the same name, imagines an authoritarian society that seeks to eliminate books because it fears the questions they provoke. Books are forbidden, firemen are tasked with burning them, people are discouraged from thinking critically, and they are exposed to a narrow range of approved ideas and conditioned to regard independent thought as disruptive. Books are dangerous in this society as they preserve competing accounts of the world and enable readers to imagine alternatives to the existing order.

The Nazi book burnings sought to eradicate works and intellectual traditions deemed incompatible with the regime’s worldview. In his address from Berlin during the book burning, Joseph Goebbels, the chief propagandist for the Nazi Party and the Reich Minister of Propaganda, hailed the “action against the un-German spirit” and called the authors whose books were being burned as “intellectual filth” and “jewish asphalt literati”. Placards at the site asserted the need to purify German language and literature and affirm traditional German values.

West Bengal Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari’s words while defending the attacks on Left bookstalls sounded eerily similar. He declared that no one would be allowed to publish “anti-national or anti-Sanatan writings” and likened the volunteers running the stalls and those defending them to “cockroaches, bedbugs, dimaagi naxals, tukde tukde gang” that needed to be eliminated. He had set the tone on the floor of the state assembly in September, directing puja committees not to allow CPI(M) bookstalls outside pandals.

The Sangh Parivar’s destruction of books and attacks against those manning the stalls selling them are a continuation of their hostility towards freedom of thought and expression. Their attacks against MF Husain’s exhibitions and Sahmat’s Hum Sab Ayodhya come to mind. The demolition of Lenin's statue in Tripura and the recent demolition and removal of Rahul Sankrityayan's statue in Raniganj were all part of the same playbook. The deployment of a huge police force in Jadavpur to destroy books, while 19 people, including a child, lost their lives in Chorbagan due to inadequate arrangements to control crowds and ensure public safety, starkly revealed the priorities of the BJP government.

THE ANSWER TO INTIMIDATION IS MORE BOOKS

In Fahrenheit 451, the preservation of books becomes an act of resistance against a society determined to erase its intellectual inheritance. In Bengal, the answer to those who destroy bookstalls is to protect them, rebuild, and keep the books circulating. And this is what our comrades have been successful in doing.

In many locations, such as in the Jadavpur 8B stall, spirited people’s resistance forced the state machinery to retreat. Despite the unprecedented and unparalleled attacks, 100 more bookstalls were set up this year as opposed to the last, and almost all bookstalls demolished by the goons were functioning again by the next day. The reported 60% surge in book sales suggests that rather than extinguishing interest in left and progressive literature, the attacks have drawn attention to the bookstalls and their readers.

Though a modest structure, a bookstall allows a passer-by to pick up a book, question an argument, discover an unfamiliar history or engage with a political perspective they may never otherwise encounter. Thousands of people thus get acquainted with progressive politics through such stalls. This is why the British seized our books and shut down our bookshops then, and why the RSS attempts to do the same now.

The books we read, the ideas we hold dear, and the unity of our people must prevail over the fascistic Sangh brigade and the attempt to impose their narratives. The future of our people depends on it.