Per media reports, two books were dropped from the library reading list of Anand Niketan School in Ahmedabad after parents’ protests—in which the VHP and Bajrang Dal also reportedly participated—over the alleged discovery of a piece of glass in food served at the school canteen, which somehow snowballed into allegations of “discrimination against one religion”. The inclusion of I Am Malala and The Diary of a Young Girl in the school’s book club was reportedly cited as evidence. The parents alleged that a consultant appointed by the school had altered the curriculum and included the two books.
Bibliophiles had gathered at Vastrapur Garden on Thursday for a silent reading protest against the private school in the city being forced to drop those two books from its reading list.
They had brought their own books and were reading in silent protest when the mob heckled them and asked them to prove they were not Muslims, one of the organisers of the protest told Ahmedabad Mirror. An official statement by The Student And Youth Collective, which organised the book-reading protest, alleged that the protesters were beaten, forced into a police van and taken to Vastrapur Police Station. One of the protesters was allegedly threatened and told that if she continued to record the incident, they would “make her disappear and no one would find her”, per the Ahmedabad Mirror report.
Ahmedabad police said they are questioning three people after a mob, allegedly of Bajrang Dal and Vishwa Hindu Parishad supporters, heckled and assaulted a group of book lovers reading The Diary of a Young Girl by Holocaust victim Anne Frank and Pakistani activist Malala Yousafzai’s I Am Malala in a park. “In this incident, a case has been registered at Vastrapur Police Station under FIR No. 11191020260278/2026, under Sections 189(1), 191(2), 191(3), 190, 115(2), 351(2) and 61(2) of the BNS, against 2 named accused and a mob of about 18 other persons, and lawful action has been taken,” the Ahmedabad police posted on its X (formerly Twitter) handle. “In this case, three accused have been rounded up on the basis of CCTV footage, and further investigation of the crime is underway,” the police said.
However, the most shocking and spineless part of this appalling incident is that the school removed the books from the list and sacked the consultant and canteen supervisor after the district authorities issued a notice to the school—probably without an investigation. When schools bow down to and cower before anti-democratic, anti-secular, reactionary, regressive and goonda elements, our education system is truly collapsing and faces an extreme threat. This then underscores whether such schools are qualified to impart education and whether authorities of such schools ought to be employed in any capacity in the education system.
Of all books, removing Holocaust victim Anne Frank’s The Diary of a Young Girl and Pakistani activist Malala Yousafzai’s I Am Malala is mindlessness at its best. This just goes to show that the aforesaid school’s authorities haven’t read the books—maybe haven’t even read too many books, except perhaps only those in the syllabus to acquire the necessary degrees required for employment. As for members of the VHP and Bajrang Dal, especially those bullying and threatening peaceful bibliophiles, they clearly have no relationship with books and reading, much less education, whatsoever.
As a schoolgirl, Anne Frank’s The Diary of a Young Girl was one of my favourite books. Those days, books weren’t so easily available in Nagaland, so for book lovers, we read whatever was available and were greatly enriched by them. One of our greatest privileges is the opportunity to learn to read and write and become lifelong book lovers—which is the continuous process of education. However, books aren’t everyone’s best friends. For a lot of people, books are dangerous simply because they don’t know the value of the written word, much less knowledge. It isn’t religion or ideology or wealth that transcends a person from being a mere mortal, but knowledge and understanding that transcend them to a higher self and a higher purpose. But throughout history, knowledge has been the enemy of the ignorant, who value and prioritise wealth, power and status to exert control and dominance over those who can think and have innate and inalienable abilities that impact the present and the future, and are unobtainable and uncrushable by violence, suppression and repression. Only the weak-minded become unquestioning, blind followers and an army of the wealthy and powerful ignorant, whose swords and shields are religion and ideology.
Books were burnt, seats of learning and libraries destroyed, and the educated, knowledgeable and wise were put to death in the Dark Ages, yet knowledge persisted, books flourished and the wise rose up again. In India, we are seeing a Dark Age with the taking over of universities and other seats of learning, rewriting history and syllabi, and making the already vulnerable education system a profitable commercial enterprise for unscrupulous people. If books are de-listed and/or banned after proper reading and critical analysis by erudite and knowledgeable people, it is one thing; but de-listing books on unreasonable grounds such as religious bigotry and racism is ignorance taken to another level. The thing is, people who read books and critically examine them do not heckle, bully, threaten and assault people. That schools actually fear the people who fear books is disturbing and damaging, and society needs to carefully study this development.
Way back in the 1970s, there was a huge religious revival of the Baptist Church in Nagaland. Books were burnt, and age-old, priceless traditional artefacts and other heritage items were destroyed. People, young and old, were singled out, condemned and humiliated as Satan’s spawn. The church became so powerful that it silenced any form of dissent. It was a kind of Dark Age that I, as a teenager, also experienced. In retrospect, it was an act of sheer ignorance and total disregard and disrespect for individual free will by a powerful religious institution. This is what happens when sworn protectors of the Constitution bow down to religious bodies. In India, what we are seeing for over a decade is the collusion of the Constitution’s sworn protectors with a majoritarian religious body.
These days, I am told that parents dictate to school authorities how schools should function. Clearly, because private schools’ priority is the profit margin, parents get away with what and how they think a school ought to function. Such parents ought to consider homeschooling their children or start their own schools and get a reality check on what other parents think about how their schools should function. These days, people with the wherewithal but no real expertise and experience start schools and colleges, making tall promises in loud advertisements, and then they become powerful pressure groups/lobbies for pro- or anti-policy matters so as to increase their profit margins. Another power centre is created in the education system. This highlights lacunae in school/college licensing policy and even the expertise and credibility of licensing authorities.
When the ignorant exerts power over knowledge, society and the state are in grave danger, and fear and silence are no longer options.
Monalisa Changkija is a Dimapur-based veteran journalist, poet, and former Proprietor, Publisher, and Editor of Nagaland Page.