Notes from a journal I do not keep

Censoring our ‘specific selves’ in the world we inhabit as publishers

Naveen Kishore, Seagull Books

In a post two thousand and fourteen world the threat of censorship walks willingly with its shadow-self: the self-censoring one.

There is no one truth about censorship. Yes, the State censors. As does the University. The ‘academia’. It does so either by ‘persuasion’ or diktat. Or tangential pressure. As in you have a lecture in Delhi at a public institution who has willingly allowed you the space and then they get a letter from the police ‘gently’ suggesting that you reconsider the event because it is highly possible it may cause some ‘disruption’ to what is called ‘law and order’. Censorship.

‘Top-down dictum’. What does this imply? We know our universities, particularly the private ones do indulge in this form of implied censorship. It is often presented as a ‘virtue’. Or that old argument about letting go of the ‘skirmishes’ in pursuit of the larger victories. To put it bluntly write as instructed or else. We the writers get used to it over time. Survival?

My practice as publisher believes in the ‘voices from below’. I use the word to suggest the ‘underdogism’ of our increasing tribe of have-nots.  To turn. The worm. From below. From beneath its acknowledged eye level. Like boring a hole into the floor. From the ceiling below. And catching It unawares. Build the structures you need. Before dismantling them. Like bridges deliberately burnt. Seal the escape routes. Get rid of the steps you had hurriedly strung between two upright lengths of wood metal rope for your ladders. The ones you needed to get to that ceiling. The one you would soon drill to the floor above. Rehearse the revolution. Practice it. You are at risk. Subterfuge. Sleight of hand. Strategy that conceals. Like successful camouflage. The left hand. From the right.

Subversion. Has to begin at the bottom.

To do this publishers like us need to consider a stage before content. I offer you intention. Or intent. Always the intent. Not in a screaming from the rooftop kind of manner. No. Just a quiet awareness about your intent to publish what needs to be published in your opinion and the opinion of your immediate colleagues.

Push further. What if you disentangle the intent from the circumstance. As in your intention to publish that for any number of reasons appears immediate, even vital to ‘put out there’ in the form of a book. The ‘circumstance’ is the political reality of our times and this leads to most of us entering into a relationship with ‘self-censorship’ as a means to survive. A perceived survival because all this while no one has actually stopped you/us from publishing that book you have pre-empted as a ‘victim’ already.

Again, through our personal lens (at Seagull) we have not faced a situation where our authors have had to hesitate and to be watchful. Not yet anyway. One more thought: we do not have an indemnity clause in our contracts. The idea is to stand by them should the obvious unfold.

Here is the dangerous part. We need to be prepared to pay the price for our sticking to intent. Each time you go out on a limb without fear you must be prepared for a pushback. At Seagull we keep our antenna out but do not stop the ‘doing’. Till we are physically stopped. Make no mistake. It is a strong possibility that this may happen. But till it does one must remain in a mode of freedom to publish however imagined this may be. Romantic? Yes. And gratefully so.

I don’t think Seagull’s catalogue would have looked any different were we based in Delhi. There are too many publishers of intent I strongly admire in Delhi. Watchful but continuing to publish. That. Which. Needs. To be published.

Period.                      

—the state as a chronicler is failing us because they’re not going to objectively record anything but their own histories in the way they wish to, which is distinct from their doctoring history as we notice, right? And then supposedly trying to make it palatable to us, which is very difficult. There is a palpable uncertainty about what is being manifested today. The recording of history has no moorings to rely on. This unfolding—a term I use to describe this time of perpetual war—is without anchor or precedence. And definitely without the underpinning of any morals. Or ethics. Therefore, the first victim is ‘truth’. We can no longer decipher the fake from the actual. Our ‘reality’ unfolds as ‘napalm’. The fire spreads destroying ‘history’ (and entire helpless populations) while it usurps the nomenclature of the ‘historical’ thereby installing the untruth the false the fake the fabricated as that which took place. An erasure as history. The act of erasing becomes our new historical fact.

—a publisher’s role today has changed there’s not enough responsibility to put the kind of books out there that also help create a certain climate for the intellect to thrive, to debate, to observe, to imbibe, to kind of find their own solutions.

—Instead, we pre-empt what we feel will be allowed and therefore dis allow ed by an all-powerful state with a capital S that has created such an atmosphere of fear and anxiety that our publishing priorities have instinctively edited out ‘that which MAY cause offense’ to our iron fisted masters.

—I am on record saying that we can no longer take a stand of neutrality. Everyone needs to take a stand. Talking from a viewpoint from deep within a world community of publishing I do despair at the hollowness of what we are producing. Those of us who attempt to be different are rubbished as ‘romantics’, ‘elitist’, therefore ‘not inclusive’ and so on. I often get accused of yet another ‘privilege’: that of publishing in the English language. As in how easy it must be for me to play first world publisher with a third world currency because my language allows me access. No one treats ‘romance’ with what you set out to do as a virtue. Your lack of algorithm is seen as the privilege of the foolhardy or at best I get comments like ‘oh you are an owner publisher so you can do what the hell you like!”

 I think the only truly useful privilege I practice is to keep doing. Regardless.

—Here is another kind of ‘censoring’ we practice:

—One in which the ‘marketplace of books’ takes on the role of an all-encompassing presence that ‘rules’ our senses; our sensibility; our enterprise. Leading to a self-imposed ‘blindness’ in a willing colluding participatory manner.

There’s a sense that, today, we’re publishing in a kind of void. You’ve decided that this is what is palatable, or this is what is going to sell, or this is what is popular. But sometimes you’re not even abdicating this responsibility consciously as a publisher. It’s almost as if you’re oblivious that you have a responsibility.

The book has become a commodity. A spectacle. It’s put out there as a grand, spectacular enterprise, and the content that should sustain the book is missing.

The censoring self goes unnoticed beneath this ‘noise’ and dare I add ‘glitter’.

In this new reality when a publisher receives a manuscript, the first thought is, will it sell? How much will I make on it? Whereas, in fact, one ideally wants the publisher to say, what are the thoughts that are being projected here? Are these the thoughts that I want to support? Or is this a debate that I wish to encourage and set afloat in society? Now, I may be speaking completely incorrectly, but I think there’s a difference between independent publishers and publishers that are hooked onto existing systems of publishing.

If you’re hooked onto a system that is money-making, you’re very lucky if you can do that together with the occasional little book that you sneak in which is thought-provoking. But the independent publishers are people with much more direction in terms of thinking about what they’re publishing.

You and I can count our proud making independents. There is an agenda. There is an intellectual agenda they focus upon because I think that they are trying to produce books that are thought-provoking. And they continue to publish what they feel needs to be published. Regardless of the ever-interfering presence of the ‘S’tate and its Other, the ‘M’arketplace.