Penguin Random House India was originally expected to publish Sonia Gandhi’s memoir, Belonging: A Journey of Love, in India. During its editorial/ legal review, Penguin says it raised concerns about parts of the manuscript and suggested changes and/ or deletions. While sources suggest the disputed material may have had to do with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the RSS, China’s occupation of Indian territory and so forth, Penguin has not confirmed the same.After Gandhi’s representatives did not agree to the proposed changes, the publisher said the discussions reached an impasse over “a particular issue”, following which they decided to not proceed with the Indian publication. Since then, a political controversy has erupted over whether government pressure played a role. Penguin has denied any external pressure, saying its editorial review was part of the normal publishing process.Ending days of speculation over the book’s fate in India, on September 4, publisher HarperCollins India announced that it would release Belonging on November 10. Globally, Alfred A. Knopf, a Penguin Random House imprint in the U.S., will publish the book on the same date. We ask publishers and authors, some of whom have faced challenges with their books in the past, to weigh in on where legal caution ends and censorship begins. Edited excerpts:Saba Naqvi, journalist and author“It is very strange that one version of the book is published by the world but here in India, the publisher says we need to fact-check? Could they know better than Sonia Gandhi? This is an autobiography and is written by a person about their life as they see it and how they perceive the world. When a leading Indian publisher issues a statement saying the deal fell through because Gandhi needed to be fact-checked, it opens up a window, when the book comes out, for her to be attacked by a certain ecosystem in a hysterical media and social media space. Gandhi’s biography is important because she’s lived a dramatic life with two former prime ministers, both assassinated, and then been the longest lasting president of the Congress. Her children still lead the Congress. We should be looking at her life to understand our country’s history, but right now we are looking at the little controversies. Very unfortunate.”Meena Kandasamy, author“I’m not saying we need freedom of expression to degrade people or do something that’s atrocious. We are talking about the right to reflect on what’s going on around us. I think that publishers should be strong enough, firm enough, and willing to fight for the rights of writers. They should be willing to take risks for writers. They should be willing to allow writers to both use imagination and creativity and, above all, integrity to stand for what they want. The minute integrity goes away from a writer, how am I different from a machine? I think what makes a writer a writer and not an AI chatbot is that I am willing to go to jail for my opinion. I’m willing to face arrest for my opinion. I’m willing to stand by what I said. If you want only polite-ese, you can just do that kind of thing from any random LLM today. I generally don’t want to say that there’s no atmosphere, no freedom to write what one wants, because I have published, time and time again, really powerful, really controversial, really strong works. I think that sometimes you do get lucky, and I have got lucky in terms of who I publish with.I genuinely also believe that one of the strangest conundrums that exists in publishing today is that the small presses, the independent houses [let’s say, a Juggernaut or a Navayana that are individually run but are independent], have so much spine and so much courage. They stand by their writers, and they are the ones that are publishing most of my radical work. The corporates are slightly weak in the knees.”Dhirendra K. Jha, author of ‘Golwalkar: The Myth Behind the Man, The Man Behind the Machine’ (2024)“They [Penguin] signed a two-book deal with me and published the first one, Gandhi’s Assassin, in 2022. But when I submitted the manuscript for the next one, a book on M.S. Golwalkar [after legal vetting], I was asked to remove all references to Nazi and Nazism, to Golwalkar’s 1939 book, We or Our Nationhood Defined, and they also disputed the Home Ministry documents that I had obtained from National Archives, about an RSS camp in Pune in 1942. I also obtained Golwalkar’s originally published book from the Library of U.S. Congress. Finally, I had to withdraw my book and thankfully, Simon & Schuster India was ready to publish it. But this was very bizarre. I have published a total of five books on Hindutva [one co-authored]. I never had to face this kind of censorship attempt at any stage. I don’t draw a line between freedom of expression and censorship. If you have evidence, then you must tell the story. If you are not telling the story, you are doing a disservice to society. I have nothing against Penguin, which has published so many good books in the past. But with this kind of approach, it is difficult to work with them.”Saif Mahmood, international lawyer and author“The problem with legal review reads today is that it increasingly assesses not what is legally defensible to publish, but what is virtually risk-free to publish. In India, anyone can file a case against anyone; the ability to sue says nothing about its merits. Legal review cannot therefore be reduced to asking whether someone might sue. If that is the threshold, nothing of consequence can be published. The real question is whether the material is legally actionable and, if challenged, whether the author and publisher have a sustainable defence. Freedom of expression necessarily encompasses criticism, interpretation and uncomfortable narratives. Publishers should defend that space, not allow the mere prospect of litigation to shrink it. The law does not demand risk-free literature; it demands legally defensible literature.”Chiki Sarkar, Publisher, Juggernaut Books“I don’t understand if Penguin India is talking about a legal read or a fact-check. ‘Fact-check’ is a bit mystifying because every time they say it, it sort of implies that she [Sonia Gandhi] was saying something wrong and they were correcting her. In general, publishers do not question the larger arguments of the author, they only fact-check things such as dates, names, places, and so forth. The edits largely happen around what’s missing, what needs better explanation. For example, we are working on a former Supreme Court judge’s book, and he states that one of his problems was the extraordinary backlog of cases in our courts. Typically, it is not my job to say, ‘Why are you saying that? They were not backlogged.’ The author can have even more provocative viewpoints, but the principle remains. My job is to say, ‘Can you describe more of this event?’ or ‘You have made this controversial statement, but you haven’t justified yourself.’ I don’t typically push an author on their philosophical viewpoint.”Anuradha Bhasin, Managing Editor, ‘Kashmir Times’“Over-sensitivity to books, I thought that was reserved for Kashmir. I think it is absurd. It is going to create a culture where people will be scared of writing. Publishers are already scared of publishing anything that is deemed to be controversial. And people will be scared to even read books or keep books. Last year, when 25 books were banned in Kashmir, people started destroying all the books they had, not just the ones that were banned. So, this sets a very wrong precedent and it gives rise to a kind of culture where we forbid or discourage reading. The publishers need to stick their neck out. Penguin is saying there is no pressure, but there is self-censorship. And that is because a certain political pressure exists. It may not be direct, but it is there.”Priyanka Pathak-Narain, author of ‘Godman to Tycoon: The Untold Story of Baba Ramdev’ (2017)“With my book on Baba Ramdev, I was reporting at the intersection of spirituality, business and politics. So, for me, the fact that my publishers were doing a serious legal read, that the manuscript was being subjected to a serious legal review, I felt protected because of it. This is something every publisher should be doing, especially for non-fiction books that impact public figures. This is not just in the interest of the public figure being written about. It is in the interest of the reporter, it is in the larger public interest that you are trying to serve through the work itself. But I think there is a very big difference between a lawyer turning around and flagging something saying, ‘Can you substantiate this?’ versus saying ‘This is going to cause legal trouble’. That turns into something that is no longer about informing your editors or publishers, but becomes a decision in itself.”Mukund Padmanabhan, professor of philosophy, Krea University“Publishers have a right to ask for changes in a manuscript if some part of it plainly violates a law or falls squarely within any of the reasonable restrictions on free speech contained in Article 19(2). The mere fear of litigation should not lead them to demand alterations or withdraw from publishing it. If there is an unwritten rule, it is that publishers should stand strongly for freedom of expression and not be intimidated by social, political or other extraneous pressures — in fact, by anything that falls short of a clear legal or constitutional transgression.”Kanishka Gupta, Founder, Writer’s Side“A literary agent’s job is not simply to act as a yes-man to the writer or to unquestioningly defend everything in the manuscript. If we believe that changes being requested by an editor, a publisher or their legal counsel are detrimental to the book, compromise its integrity or undermine what the author is trying to say, then of course we should push back. But a good agent should also be able to tell an author when certain recommendations deserve to be taken seriously, particularly when those changes are in the author’s own interest and could protect them from unnecessary legal exposure or other harm. Sometimes, the solution is surprisingly simple. It may involve rephrasing a sentence, removing or changing a qualifier, or finding another way of making essentially the same point without compromising what the author wants to say.”Narayani Basu, author of ‘A Man For All Seasons: The Life of K.M. Panikkar’ (2025)“Four lines from my first book, a 400-page biography of V.P. Menon [V.P. Menon: The Unsung Architect of Modern India; Simon and Schuster India, 2020] became controversial during the COVID lockdown. In one of Menon’s last interviews, recorded and stored in the private archives of H.V. Hodson at SOAS, London, he had said that the first draft of the cabinet list didn’t have Sardar Patel’s name on it, and he [Menon] had gone to speak to Mountbatten to rectify this. Now, these are based on Menon’s recordings but it created an immense controversy, which for a debut author was alarming. I am Menon’s great- granddaughter but I’m also a trained historian and if this was his experience, it’s my job to put it down. The controversy I faced was definitely not smooth. But did I have my agent and publisher’s backing? Yes, I did. Did they ask me to delete or alter any text? No, they didn’t.”Rachita Taneja, Founder of Sanitary Panels, and author of ‘Touching Grass: A Book of Comics’ (2026)“I think there needs to be a mutual good-faith understanding between the publisher and the author. The publisher should not commission someone to write a book knowing what they are going to write. If you are giving someone a contract and you know that the story is going to be about something assumed to be controversial, the publisher cannot pull the rug out from under the author and say, ‘No, I’ve changed my mind because I’m worried about the potential risks.’ I think authors have every right to push back against the publisher’s demands that are not reasonable. So, if the publisher cannot justify why they are censoring the author, then the author has every right to walk away. And they should walk away. I think it’s important that stories are told as intended by the author, and not as dictated by companies that are in this for profit generation.”Enjoyed this article? Mail your feedback to mag.letters@thehindu.co.in