An acclaimed novel, taught at a university for several years, can be removed from the syllabus overnight because somebody’s son wants to make his political debut hitting the right note. The party in power, which claims to be somewhat more tolerant and inclusive than the opposition party of this father-son duo, rushes to justify this ban. Enthused by the camaraderie cutting across party lines, the book-ban party now also wants a burqa ban. All this is happening in a city that has reached where it has reached solely due to its openness to what the academics call The Other.

It is surely a sorry journey so far.

But let’s look at the brighter side of l’affaire Rohitnon Mistry:

That our universities and the whole higher education system are not as inflexible as we thought them to be. You thought a 154-year-old university would not bother to revise the syllabus and, see, they can make changes even midway through a semester. Let’s be content with that. It would be wishing too much that such changes were somewhat positive.

That our politicians do care for our education. You always thought they won’t have time to spare about matters of (here comes the nice phrase) mere academic interest, busy as they would be cutting deals with land mafias and party hoppers. How wrong we were! Of course, we wish etcetera etcetera.

That but for the bans and burnings, a majority would have forgotten what literature smells or tastes like. Except for Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses, Mistry’s Such a Long Journey and may be a bit of Taslima Nasrin’s Lajja, do we have public readings these days? There’s a ring of truth to what a character in Italo Calvino’s If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler says: nobody cares more for literature than dictators and fascists (the corollary being that those who should be caring for literature are caring more for positions on literary akademis).

That this highly productive debate over the Mistry book’s fate should now expand. They should propose a Right to be Offended and a National Policy on Ban (Books, Cinema, Statues and Other Cultural Products) along with a Commission on similar lines. There seems to be a political consensus in that direction.