As the controversy surrounding the abject capitulation of Bloomsbury to the pressure mounted by the liberal establishment to de-platform a book on Delhi Riots 2020 intensifies, ‘The Print’ founder Shekhar Gupta has levelled false accusations against authors Sanjeev Sanyal, Dr Anand Ranganathan and Sanjay Dixit.
In his video show ‘Cut The Clutter’, Gupta absolved the liberals from coercing the Bloomsbury publication to backtrack on its decision to publish a book on Delhi Riots 2020 and instead wrongly pinned the blame of threatening Bloomsbury on authors Sanjeev Sanyal, Dr Anand Ranganathan and Sanjay Dixit.
In the above clip from Gupta’s video show ‘Cut The Clutter’ on YouTube, it can be seen that Gupta announces that some ‘prominent authors’ had threatened to withdraw publishing of their books with Bloomsbury if they do not stop the Delhi Riots book by Monica Arora. With a blatant and abject misrepresentation, the video then shows the tweets of Sanjeev Sanyal, Anand Ranganathan and Sanjay Dixit.
Surprisingly, Gupta does not name the persons, the ‘secular-liberals’ who actually pressurised Bloomsbury to de-platform the above-mentioned book.
Shekhar Gupta blames Sanjeev Sanyal, Dr Anand Ranganathan and others for Bloomsbury’s capitulation to ‘Liberals’
Gupta, who also happens to be the President of The Editors Guild of India, alleged in the video that the decision of Bloomsbury to cancel the publication of the book on Delhi Riots 2020 was taken after authors such as Sanjeev Sanyal, Dr Anand Ranganathan, Sanjay Dixit and several others, who have published their books with the publication house, threatened to sever their ties with the organisation.
In reality, Sanjeev Sanyal, Dr Anand Ranganathan, Sanjay Dixit, Shefali Vaidya and several other authors, took to Twitter to condemn Bloomsbury’s arbitrary decision of withdrawing the publication of the book ‘Delhi Riots 2020: The Untold Story’ by authors of Monika Arora, Sonali Chitalkar and Prerna Malhotra. As a consequence of the Bloomsbury’s unprofessional behaviour, many authors also announced that they will no longer be associated with an organisation that actively partakes in suppressing Freedom of Expression.
Tweets posted by Sanjeev Sanyal, Dr Anand Ranganathan were meant to condemn the arbitrary de-platforming of the book by Bloomsbury
The tweets posted by the authors, which were shown in Gupta’s video as the ones ‘threatening’ Bloomsbury, were in response to the Bloomsbury’s abject surrender to the pressure from the liberal intelligentsia, who were rattled at the publication house for providing their platform for a contrarian viewpoint on the Delhi Riots 2020. However, Gupta twisted the grievances raised by the authors about the publication house’s unacceptable behaviour and misrepresented them, claiming Bloomsbury withdrew the publishing of the book after the tweets posted by the aforementioned authors.
Authors demand clarification from Gupta for the dishonest presentation
Gupta’s dishonesty was promptly called out by author Sanjeev Sanyal, who in his tweet called out ‘The Print’ founder for blatantly misrepresenting him and Dr Anand Ranganathan. Clarifying his stance, Sanyal said that contrary to what Shekhar Gupta had presented in his ‘Cut The Clutter’ video, he and Dr Ranganathan had been advocating Freedom of Expression and are protesting against the cancellation of the book by the publication house.
This is dishonest, especially since you did not once name the individuals were actually responsible for the shocking act of ideological censorship. I expect you to correct the video and make a clarification 2/n
— Sanjeev Sanyal (@sanjeevsanyal) August 24, 2020
Dr Anand Ranganathan also posted a sharply critical tweet addressed to Shekhar Gupta for peddling lies about him and Sanjeev Sanyal. Dr Ranganathan asserted that Gupta is an embarrassment to his profession and that his analysis on the book cancellation by Bloomsbury was immature and replete with lies and falsehoods. He also threatened to sue Shekhar Gupta for giving a false account of tweets by him and Sanjay Sanyal.
Astonishingly puerile analysis, delivered in trademark crude articulation, and laced with more lies per metre cube than what Pinocchio could manage on desi tharra.
— Anand Ranganathan (@ARanganathan72) August 24, 2020
This man is an embarrassment to his profession, whatever it is.
Cut the crap or Sanjeev Sanyal and I will sue you. pic.twitter.com/6L1uqJUnQp
Soon after Gupta and ‘The Print’ were called out for their skulduggery, the video posted on YouTube was made ‘private’, so as to refrain the users from watching it.
Shekhar Gupta apologises
Shekhar Gupta, on his part, apologised and re-shared the video after editing the portions that were misrepresenting the authors.
When Bloomsbury, global, liberal, publisher prints a book on Delhi riots & withdraws it
— Shekhar Gupta (@ShekharGupta) August 24, 2020
Rectified version of my #CutTheClutter, Episode 556. The original had some errors creep in in the editing process.
Very sorry about this, people..https://t.co/lCzv4YWW9F
In his tweet, Shekhar Gupta said that in the original video, there were some errors and he was sorry about them.
Bloomsbury surrenders to the leftist online mob, de-platforms Delhi riots book
Bloomsbury India kicked had up a storm after it decided to withdraw the publication of the book ‘Delhi Riots 2020: The Untold Story’ by authors Monika Arora, Sonali Chitalkar and Prerna Malhotra. In a statement, the publication house cited a ‘virtual pre-publication launch organised without our knowledge by the authors’ as one of the reasons for its decision.
Bloomsbury India said that they had planned to release the book, a factual account based on investigation and interviews conducted by the authors, in September 2020 but they have rescinded their decision.
The publication house further added, “However, in view of very recent events including a virtual pre-publication launch organised without our knowledge by the authors, with participation by parties of whom the Publishers would not have approved, we have decided to withdraw publication of the book.”
Even as the Bloomsbury informed that they are withdrawing the book, it was marked as unavailable on e-commerce site Amazon. Before that, the book was available for pre-order, and a large number of people had pre-ordered the book ahead of its planned launch in next month.
