The Lethal Power of Banned Books

A new book recounts the secret history of the CIA's literary programme to invade the Iron Curtain in the 1980s

- Somak Ghoshal

In 1904, Franz Kafka, then a passionate young man of 21, wrote in a letter to his friend Oskar Pollak a sentence that has since passed into the collective conscience of the literary world: "A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us." The statement is now common currency on bookstagram, exuding a feel-good earnestness that belies the sinister message underlying it: that books can unleash reactions in individuals that can swell and grow into a great tide of discontent against the powers that be.

It's not surprising that the seemingly innocuous act of reading has struck as much fear into the hearts of authoritarian regimes as the possibility of violent rebellion against them by the people. Over a century after Kafka wrote his letter, our attention spans are dwindling under the strain of screen addiction, and the public's brain is rotting, by all accounts. But governments continue to work on a war footing to stem the flow of "subversive" books that may "corrupt" the minds of citizens.

A recent report published by the American Library Association shows that last year, 72% of the demands to ban books in the US came from politicians, pressure groups, elected officials, board of directors and other governing body members. A few months ago, in a bizarre turn of events, a misplaced official ban order reversed the fortunes of Salman Rushdie's controversial novel, Satanic Verses, making it available in India for the first time since 1988. It was a refreshing contrast to the many attempts to ban books that have plagued the reputation of successive dispensations in the republic, most famously among them the court case against American scholar Wendy Doniger's The Hindus: An Alternative History, first published in 2009 by Penguin Viking in India.