THE Bangladesh Publishers and Booksellers’ Association has written to publishing house Adarsha, which is taking part in the 46th International Kolkata Book Fair that began on January 31, asking it not to put up on  display and sales the title Bangalir Midiokritir Sandhane written by Faham Abdus Salam that Adarsha published in February 2022. The move sounds as ludicrous as curious it does. It happened on January 30, a day after the Bangla Academy, an autonomous institution funded by the government to foster the Bangla language, literature and culture, on January 29 denied Adarsha the allotment of a stall, after a prolonged tussle, in the Amar Ekushey Granthamela, which begins today. The tussle ensued after the Bangla Academy on January 22 had decided that it would not allot any stall to Adarsha on grounds that the book at hand violated two clauses of the fair guidelines for 2023. The academy then said that the book made ‘controversial, critical and insinuating statements’ on the liberation war, Bangladesh’s founding president and the current prime minister. Adarsha later agreed not to put up on display and sales the contentious title. But the academy’s book fair organising committee has finally decided not to allot any stall to Adarsha.

What makes it a curious case is that while the academy has violated the pluralistic spirit of the language movement, making inroads on the freedom of expression of writers and publishers, by not allotting a stall to Adarsha, the Publishers and Booksellers’ Association, a private entity that claims to be the central agency for the management of books and publishing industry in Bangladesh, worryingly toes the line of the academy, or the government for that matter, by asking Adarsha not to display and sell the title at hand in an international book fair that the Publishers and Booksellers’ Guild of West Bengal has organised in Kolkata. The vice-president of the association, which has arranged for the stalls for local publishers in the Bangladesh pavilion in the Kolkata book fair, has given a reason almost the same that the academy did, noting that ‘the image of the country will be tarnished if the book is displayed in a foreign country.’ The association has also stood against the freedom of expression of writers and publishers in its furtherance of the same sentiment that the government holds about the book. This is unacceptable. It is extremely important for the Bangla Academy and the Publishers and Booksellers Association to learn that learning does not always lie in reading books that conform to ruling narratives. The academy’s Ekushey book fair organising committee and the executive committee of the Publishers and Booksellers’ Association should not hold the right to decide what is ‘right’ and what is ‘wrong’ for readers.

In the issue at hand, both the academy and the association have deviated from the pluralistic spirit of the language movement in their efforts to suppress voices that do not toe the ruling narratives.