Penguin Random House India has withdrawn Joe Sacco’s latest book on a 2013 episode of sectarian violence after demanding editorial changes the author claimed amounted to “finding excuses” not to distribute it.
The Once and Future Riot is Sacco’s graphic reconstruction of the 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, where over 60 people were killed and about 40,000 displaced, the majority of them Muslims, in the run-up to the election that brought Narendra Modi and his Hindu nationalist BJP party to power.
After being published internationally last year, The Once and Future Riot was expected to reach Indian bookshops in August or September. Penguin Random House India, however, decided not to distribute it after a legal and editorial review, according to The Indian Express.
“I was issued a five-page list of changes, corrections, and some requirements. I looked it over, and some of what they were asking seemed quite onerous to me,” Sacco told The Wire. “Verifications of consent from people I’d spoken to, verifications of likenesses, my drawings I guess.”
“The main thing for me was changes that seemed like editorial changes they were asking for,” the writer added, “removing quotes about public figures, removing quotes from a public figure I talked to, even to the extent of ‘move this caption down the page.’”
Sacco said the publisher wanted the line “and just since the BJP has taken power, that Hindu hegemony has been firing on all cylinders” removed from the Indian edition, claiming that it could be construed as “inflammatory and causing religious offence”.
