Rama Retold

Rama Retold is a book by Aubrey Menen. This book cannot be imported into India.

The surviving record is interesting because it shows how even ordinary-looking books can acquire a charged political afterlife. As a book, it can be read not only for subject matter but for the way form, tone, and circulation make a text feel dangerous, intimate, or politically usable to anxious officials.

It also matters as part of a wider censorship history in India. The present page is a dossier starter built from source-tracked ban records; the surviving note currently says: This book cannot be imported into India. It was a play which was a spoof of the Ramayana. It was one of the first books to be banned in independent India. The American edition was simply called The Ramayana. More publication history, translations, and close reading can be added later.

Rama Retold entered censorship debates as a book associated with controversy, doctrine, public controversy, publication history, religion, and state scrutiny. In the current dossier, the main state objections cluster around political sensitivity, religious control, and religious offense.

The earliest event currently captured here is 1955 in India, where Government of India or British Indian authorities banned publication, sale, or possession. This book cannot be imported into India. It was a play which was a spoof of the Ramayana. It was one of the first books to be banned in independent India. The American edition was simply called The Ramayana. This book cannot be imported into India. It was a play which was a spoof of the Ramayana. It was one of the first books to be banned in independent India. The American edition was simply called The Ramayana.

The record already stretches across India, which is why the page should be read as a cross-border censorship trail rather than a single isolated dispute.

This page is intentionally incomplete. The ban history is a starter dataset, not a final census of every jurisdiction or decree.

• 100 Banned Books: Censorship Histories of World Literature Nicholas J. Karolides, Margaret Bald, and Dawn B. Sova

  A compact reference on how censorship systems moved across states, churches, and courts.

• Banned Books: 387 B.C. to 1978 A.D. Anne Lyon Haight

  Useful for comparing older obscenity, heresy, and political bans with modern free-speech disputes.

• Assassins of the Mind Christopher Hitchens

  Frames the Rushdie affair as a test of free speech against violent religious intimidation.

• From Fatwa to Jihad Kenan Malik

  Tracks how conflicts over blasphemy, race, and offense evolved after the Rushdie controversy.

• Wikipedia: List of books banned in India reference partial
• Wikipedia: List of books banned by governments reference partial
• Wikipedia REST summary API database partial
• 100 Banned Books: Censorship Histories of World Literature book partial
• Banned Books: 387 B.C. to 1978 A.D. book partial
• Christopher Hitchens: Assassins of the Mind article partial
• From Fatwa to Jihad book not started