Don't mention pork, sausages in textbooks: OUP's move to appease Muslims, Jews is absurd

Sometimes it’s reassuring to know that the rest of the world can be as kneejerk and irrational as India when it comes to what it finds offensive. The Oxford University Press has apparently told its writers not to mention pigs, pork or sausages in any of its work in case it offends Jews and Muslims. One assumes bacon would be even rasher. If this is true the VHP should get offended and demand that it extend the same courtesy to millions of Hindus and omit all references to beef. Cows, being sacred, are fine. But beef, steaks, veal should forthwith be banned. They might even succeed to forcing OUP to bend to its will. The OUP in India famously stopped publication of A K Ramanujan’s essay “Three Hundred Ramayanas: Five Examples and Three Thoughts in Translation” after protests by religious and cultural groups. [caption id=“attachment_2048377” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Reuters[/caption] The story would be both ludicrous and funny if the OUP was not the largest university press in the world. As a university press, it’s even more important that it reflects the world around it instead of creating a bubble of inoffensiveness and even worse imagining offence where none was taken. The Guardian says there’s even an acronym for topics that should be avoided – PARSNIP - politics, alcohol, religion, sex, narcotics, isms (communism for example) and pork. Unmentionables were once a coy way of talking about underwear. OUP gives whole new meaning to the word. The mention of a pig in a book hardly turns it into a Charlie Hebo cartoon satirizing the Prophet. But by even putting out that impression, OUP sounds like it is living up to L K Advani’s famous saying about the press during the Emergency when asked to bend, chose to crawl instead. It’s hardly a book about the virtues of pork that probably won’t find buyers in the Middle East. It’s an assumption that Jews and Muslims cannot even abide by the word ‘pig’ or ‘pork’. In the guise of asking authors to “consider cultural differences and sensitivities” OUP risks making genuine consideration of those differences impossible. Henceforth whenever a real debate springs up about the appropriateness of a book or topic, this will be the example put forth to prove political correctness run amuck. This is exactly the kind of pandering that gives multiculturalism a ban name. Thankfully UK Labour MP Khalid Mahmood agrees. He told The Daily Mail “That’s absolute, utter nonensense. And when go too far, that brings the whole discussion into disrepute.” In a more connected world the overseas market has a bearing on our books and media. Sony did not want to release The Interview after North Korea had an understandable hissy fit about its leader being the target of a comic assassination attempt. After the fall of the Soviet Union Hollywood has struggled to find new bad guys. Arab terrorists are always a failsafe option but can affect a film’s fortunes in the Middle East. Men in Black 3 cut 13 minutes to remove all its Chinese villains. Red Dawn spent a million dollars replacing all its Chinese invaders, flags and all, with North Korean ones. But while a company has to understand the cultural sensitivities of a global marketplace, it turns out it’s not just pigs that cannot fly in OUP. “There are lists, and they are long, of things we can’t mention,” said award-winning English language teaching (ELT) author Nicola Prentis. “Things like gay relationships are an absolute no-no – a lot of writers feel why can’t we sometimes have a photo of a couple who happen to be men, without making an issue of it? Other topics we can’t mention are dogs – for a couple of reasons, because it might offend Koreans, or Muslims; cats are OK – horoscopes and gambling.” Of course some people will get offended and some are in the business of getting offended. OUP might want its books to work in Saudi Arabia but the largest university press might want to wonder at what cost. Saudi Arabia might want the rest of the world to look like Saudi Arabia but does OUP want to oblige it? And in the process set up an ugly precedent in a competitive taking offence derby. India has had first hand experience of that where the ban on the import of Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses still lives on in demands for other bans by other communities at the drop of a hat. Ironically while the OUP thinks it’s being ultra sensitive to a multicultural world, its PARSNIP rules are inadvertently trying to create a monocultural world that it hopes is acceptable to everyone and therefore as unexciting and bland as a parsnip.