The case against the so-called “Urban Naxals” took a curious turn with the accused's reading habits finding a place in the police panchnama. The judge may or may not have fully understood the significance of War and Peace when he found the title in their reading list, and it led to much mirth as Twitterati took off to lampoon the judge, dragging in the Mahatma too in their quest to inject humour. There was more activity in court as the judge ticked off people for thinking he didn’t know what a literary classic Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace was when he had pointed to War And Peace in Junglemahal: People, State and Maoists, a collection of essays on Marxism and other social and political thoughts.
The entire case of those accused of stoking communal trouble in the Koregaon Bhima case, over links with Maoists, has run like a parody of the justice system for over a year. It’s up to prosecutors to prove they are indeed prosecuting and not persecuting the accused. It shouldn't be the State’s concern what literature people prefer to read. As long as people don't indulge in violence or subversive activities, why does it matter to anyone what people read. After all, Karl Marx’s Das Kapital was widely read by the youth in the West too.
If India boxed itself into a corner by banning Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses, it could be blamed on the silly politics of the time that deserved lampooning. The Pune judge’s query — “Why so much war?” — is, however, a philosophical question worth mulling over, although such a query may have tested even the wisdom of Pluto and Socrates, leave alone Marx or Mao.
