Don't burn books!

The poem,"The Burning Of Books" by Bertolt Brecht is set in the backdrop of the reign of the Nazi's led by Hitler in Germany. It describes the troubled times when the Nazi’s tried to put German culture into the Nazi straightjacket. This was done by burning those books which opposed the ideals of the government.

This incident of burning of books is not an isolated one. In 1989, Salman Rushdie’s book “The Satanic Verses” was banned for some Muslim religious leaders felt it was blasphemous. Many well known children’s books like “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” by Lewis Carroll were also banned for the portrayal of anthropomorphized animals acting on the same levels as humans.

Several books are either banned or challenged every year, most common reasons for this being that they insult the sentiments of other religions or due to vulgar and obscene passages contained in them.

I strongly believe that burning books is not the answer. Most advanced and democratic societies give people the right to express themselves even if these opinions are sometimes controversial. In fact democracy demands that multiple views find expression. However, most of these countries have libel laws and other laws to ensure that creative people don’t misuse their freedom of expression to insight hatred or violence. I would argue that burning or banning a book simply gives it more publicity than it might have otherwise received. In almost all cases it would be better to let the book succeed or fail through the only real test for any book-its reception among the reading public.