The Satanic Verses, a novel by British-Indian writer Salman Rushdie, is banned in India. First published in September 1988, the book was inspired by the life of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. This book, and the fatwa issued over it, is the reason Rushdie was stabbed in August 2022.
Written by Lourenco De Sadvandor and published in 1963, this book was banned from being imported into India in 1979 for being poorly researched and incendiary. It provides an alternative view on Mahatma Gandhi's assassination and alleges that a larger conspiracy was at play.
A book by VS Naipaul, the book was banned in India for its "negative portrayal of India and its people". In this travelogue, Naipaul details his trip through India in the early 1960s.
This book by Cultural historian Dwijendra Narayan Jha presents textual evidence from Vedic scriptures and medical texts that showed Hindus believed eating beef and slaughtering cows wasn't taboo until the 19th century. In a nation where the Hindu majority believes the cow to be sacred and abstains from eating beef, this book was promptly banned by the Hyderabad Civil Court and the author received several death threats.
In 2011, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Joseph Lelyveld published a biography of Gandhi. In the book, he suggested that Gandhi had an intimate relationship with a German-Jewish architect, Hermann Kallenbach, with whom he lived with in Johannesburg for two years. The book was promptly banned by the government in Gujarat. PM Narendra Modi, the-then chief minister of the state, said the writing was "perverse in nature and hurt the sentiments of those with capacity for sane and logical thinking" and demanded a public apology from the author.