The Hindu Business Line : Two books and a few scrawls

A reader is angry with Amalendu Misra, a lecturer in politics at Queen's University, Belfast. It seems Misra's book titled Identity and Religion says things that are disrespectful to Gandhiji. So, I check out the book.

Well, in one place, Misra talks of how Gandhiji's opinion of Islam drew several letters of protest, and how in 1905 he apologised and remarked that he did not want to prolong the controversy.

"In April 1906, Gandhi reiterated his apology," notes Misra and adds: "This was the only direct confrontation Gandhi had with the Muslims in South Africa." Almost a century old story!

Then comes a passage that angers my friend, a quote from Dhananjay Keer, one of Gandhiji's biographers: "It seems that Gandhi had learnt one of the most important lessons of his life, and in future he took the utmost care never to wound the susceptibilities of the Muslims. This experience was so unpleasant and controversial he did not even refer to this in his autobiography."

There are practical limitations in putting everything in a biography, though my friend doesn't subscribe to such a view.

I find the book has some interesting content about Savarkar, and so I'm keen to read it after the Maharashtra elections! Meanwhile, I want to tell the angry reader who is aiming missiles at Misra a story that broke in the media around the recent Gandhi Jayanthi.

A small library, that "isn't much larger than a family home", located in rural Whatcom County, in the US, has many books including one on Osama bin Laden. Sometime ago, a patron of the library noticed a scrawl of "allegedly pro-Bin Laden comment" (`Let history be witness I am a criminal') on the margin of one of the pages of the book.

He gave the book to FBI and it appears they found the matter "serious enough" and so came to the library to ask for names and addresses of patrons who had borrowed the book.

The librarian said, "Nothing doing!" because the FBI had no right to know. A story datelined `Whatcom County' on Oct 5 is by April Zepeda, posted at www.komotv.com. You'd learn that the book at the centre of controversy is Bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War on America, by Yossef Bodansky, a former senior consultant for the US Departments of Defense and State.

Zepeda cites a quote from the Library Director thus: "Libraries are a haven where people should be able to seek whatever information they want to pursue without any threat of government intervention."

Simple and true. You don't put books in jail, do you? Nor jail all library users.

By Oct 8, faced with the opposition and, perhaps, the support that the library got on the Net, the FBI withdrew the grand jury subpoena it had produced to intimidate the library.

Experts point out that if the FBI had asked for the records using powers conferred on it by the Patriot Act, there would have been no option for the library to refuse.

As things stand, the book is still with the cops and the librarian is restless that it is already overdue.

According to one theory, the cops are probably of the view that one of the borrowers would have been Osama himself!

E&OE@TheHindu.co.in

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Two books and a few scrawls