By Auswaf Ahsan
The office of the Other Book was raided on Friday 6th August 2010, Friday. A team of police officers led by Calicut Assistant Police Commissioner Mr. Showkath Ali and town police station SI Mr. Aneesh Joy came to our office in the evening and raided the book stall and editorial office without any search warrant. The team comprised two officers from the cyber cell, half a dozen officers from IB, around 10 officers in uniform and press persons from print and visual media. They scanned our inbox and examined our titles and computers. The police on the following day told press persons that they had not seized any incriminating data from our office (The Hindu, 8th August 2010). The hard disk that the officers have trawled out of our computer is being examined at C-DAC, Thriuvanthapuram, Kerala. They have not seized any data or books from the office during the raid, which lasted until night.
As the officers reported to us, the reason for the raid was that an accused in an undisclosed case under the Aluva Police station limit possessed a book and pamphlet whose publisher they wanted to trace. They wanted also to verify whether Other Books has any published documents with objectionable content. Some newspapers cooked up stories regarding the raid. One headline and picture caption went: ‘Publishing house of Popular Front raided.’ As we could understand, the incident was part of the sate-wide nabbing of the activists of Popular Front of India, a Muslim socio-political organization, in connection with the attack on Prof. Joseph, who prepared a question paper insulting Prophet Muhammed. We believe that one should respond to the calumny and communal propaganda by creating discourses and condemn the attack against the professor.
Other Books was established as a distributer of non-mainstream academic books in 2003 and in 2006 it forayed into publishing books. For four years, it has established itself as an independent publisher; ‘independent’ in the sense that it does not come under Popular Front of India or any other organizations and that it does not subscribe to the policy or outlook of other religious or political groups. The aim and policy of Other Books is to bring out and distribute quality books in the fields of subaltern studies, religious reform, post modernism, women studies, West Asian politics etc. We have also aimed to document the Mappila history, history of Kerala Muslims and Dalit and caste studies. One of our titles, “Educational Empowerment of Kerala Muslims: A Socio-Historical Perspective” was published with a grant from the Indian Council for Historical Research. The authors whose books we have published, translated or are working on include Ziauddin Sardar, Amina Wadud, Tariq Ramdan, Susan Nathan, Ang Swee Chai, Ralph Shoemann, Rolland Miller, Andy Stern etc. We have signed copyrights contracts with the world’s leading publishers such as Oxford University Press, Harper Collins, Orient Black Swan, Granta, Islamic Book Trust, Essentials, Islamic Text Society, International Institute for Islamic Thought, Chicago University Press etc. Leading authors in Kerala like Dr KN Panikkar, DR MGS Narayanan, Paul Zacharia, Dr KKN Kurup, Dr KN Ganesh, Ninan Koshy and BRP Bhaskar have written for us. Eminent scholars like AG Noorani have reviewed our titles. Being deeply respectful to diverse theoretical positions, Other Books plans to bring out quality arguments and insightful analyses on subjects that are otherwise unheeded by mainstream publishers.
Dr. Auswaf Ahsan of Other Books. [TCN Photo]
We request you to be vigilant on the move against independent firms run by Muslims, Dalits and other alternative groups, in a political climate which is very similar to that of an undeclared emergency.
We express our sincere gratitude to our friends, activists, officers and media firms who have clarified the issue and carried our corrections in different media.
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Auswaf Ahsan is the Managing Editor of Other Books.