The Institute for Development and Communication (IDC), a Chandigarh-based think tank, inaugurated a week-long exhibition on banned books titled ‘Bounded Ideas?’ under its initiative ‘Thinkers Collective’ on June 5. Around 100 framed book covers, along with contextual notes detailing the political and social circumstances that led to their ban in India, are being showcased.
Inaugurated by Manraj Grewal, Resident Editor of ‘The Indian Express’, the exhibition invites viewers to revisit books that stirred debate, provoked discomfort, inspired resistance, and ignited conversations across times.
Diverse books from across themes and geographies, including V.S. Naipaul’s ‘An Area of Darkness’, Salman Rushdie’s ‘The Satanic Verses’, Arthur Koestler’s ‘The Lotus and the Robot’, Greville Wynne’s ‘The Man from Moscow’, and Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar’s ‘The Adivasi Will Not Dance’, have been included in the exhibition curated by Dr. Srishti Chauhan, Assistant Professor at the Centre for Gender Studies, IDC.
Encouraging viewers to reflect on the continuing relevance of debates surrounding artistic and intellectual freedom, Dr. Pramod Kumar, Chairperson of the Institute for Development and Communication (IDC), who conceived Thinkers Collective, stressed that in contemporary times, think tanks and research centres must not work in isolation or become “islands”.
“The need of the hour is that they respond to contemporary narratives and intervene in a manner that not just scholars, but everybody, feels connected. The exhibition on banned books, which will be open to all, is the first in a series of many that will be organised in the coming months. It is extremely important that diverse ideas are debated. This exhibition pushes us to reflect, and at the same time cautions that reactions should not be break-neck,” he stressed.
For Dr. Chauhan, the exhibition aims to illustrate that what changes over time is the threshold of fear — what the state and society believe a book is potentially capable of generating, triggering, or altering at a given historical moment.
She adds, “Moving beyond the label ‘banned’, the aim is to explore larger questions of dissent, discomfort, morality, nationalism, and freedom of expression. It seeks to examine how books become sites of contestation and invites viewers to deliberate upon who decides what is considered offensive, dangerous, or permissible — and why?”
The curator will be holding informal interactions with viewers twice a day (12:00 pm to 12:30 pm and 3:30 pm to 4:00 pm) till Friday.
Speaking to the gathering comprising bureaucrats, former judges, scholars, citizens from the region and students from different colleges, Manraj Grewal stressed, “Across the world, books are getting banned, even now. This clearly reflect how some people are scared of ideas that refuse to ‘serve’ them. The exhibition here provokes us to think. It is paramount that young people see this to understand that thoughts can never be caged. Even we do not agree with an idea, it must not mean that it should not be engaged with. There are several examples of books that were banned during a particular era becoming cult classics later.”
