Book review: Censorship in South Asia: Cultural Regulation from Sedition to Seduction
Abstract
SARspsarSouth Asia Research0262-72801741-3141SAGE PublicationsSage India: New Delhi, India10.1177/02627280110310030910.1177_026272801103100309Book ReviewsBook review: Censorship in South Asia: Cultural Regulation from Sedition to SeductionBhuianNazmuzzamanSOAS, University of London112011313305309KaurRaminderMazzarellaWilliam (Eds.), Censorship in South Asia: Cultural Regulation from Sedition to Seduction (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009), + pp.© 2011 SAGE Publications2011SAGE PublicationsEntertainment has become a prominent mass media activity in South Asia and censorship, with origins in British colonial times, attracts nowadays much publicity. Placing contemporary evidence in a historical and regional context and investigating to what extent contemporary practices of censorship echo or reconfigure those of the colonial period, this edited volume proficiently pictures the striking continuities of colonial censorship and present troubles in the social dynamics of South Asia.Focused on India, Chapter 1 provides examples of some of the best known incidents of media censorship in South Asia. State-sponsored official censorship coexists with self-censorship, inextricable as unofficial or primary restriction on one level, and the productive aspect of censorship according to a Foucauldian schema on another. Far from only silencing, censorship may also be a generative technology of truth, articulating a language of the hidden and the sacred in which everything is public without being shown. Censorship, involving many repressive facets, can also