Date:18/01/2004 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2004/01/18/stories/2004011802911000.htm

National

Historians protest ban on book

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI, JAN. 17. Historians today joined the chorus of protests within the academic community against the vandalism at the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute (BORI) in Pune earlier this month.

In a statement issued here under the banner of the Safdar Hashmi Memorial Trust (SAHMAT), they described the Maharashtra Government's ban on the American Indologist, James Laine's book as ``totally unwarranted''.

Condemning the vandalism at BORI and the attack on the Sanskrit scholar, Srikant Bahulkar, the historians said: ``It is quite clear that our cultural heritage is not safe with the fundamentalist forces having a free run in the country. They are being actively encouraged by the ideology that preaches intolerance and has no respect for half-a-millennium-old monuments, contemporary art practices and scholarly pursuits.''

They said the ban ``only provides moral justification to the vandals''. Instead, the Maharashtra Government should move for punishing the guilty, they demanded. The historians who have put their signatures to the statement include R.S. Sharma, R.C. Thakran, Suraj Bhan, Irfan Habib, D.N. Jha, Shireen Moosvi and K. M. Shrimali.