Censorship of Literature in Post-Revolutionary Iran : Politics and Culture Since 1979

Chapter 8 CONCLUSION Notes Bibliography Index was a room near the gendarmerie on our way to school. It had a black signboard, metal bookshelves, and two folding metal chairs. Saādat and I were the librarians. We were very enthusiastic about our jobs. We felt incredibly special and important. My brother and his friends used to come to the library every afternoon and talk passionately about revolution. After a short while, whispers of worries and concerns were heard about this library. Some older people warned that the library contained communist books which should not be offered to children. The library was closed down and the books moved to our house. Now I had a large quantity of books from which to choose. That summer was one of the best summers in my life. In autumn of the same year, our neighbour informed us that the books had been reported to the Islamic Revolutionary Committee and that one of these nights they would come and search our house. He suggested that we get rid of the books. Late that night, my brother, my father, and I took the books to the basement. A disused water canal had been flowing under our house and there was a dried well in our basement. My father opened the mouth of this well and the two of them threw sacks of books into it while I was holding the lantern. Balzac, Stendhal, Maxim Gorki, Chekhov, Ahmad Mahmoud, Mahmoud Dowlatabadi -all went into the well. In an atmosphere of fear and frenzy, I only managed to save one book Mohammad, Prophet to Know Anew ('La Vie de Mahomet') by Constantin Virgil Gheorghiu. I told my father that this book was about the Prophet. 'It is an Islamic book; let me take this. ' My brother also took a very thick book with tiny fonts entitled Collected Works of Lenin. He said that it was a particularly important book and that we needed to keep it. So we went to the garden attached to the house, dug a deep hole, wrapped the book in plastic, put it in an old leather bag and buried Lenin in our garden under a sour cherry tree. The above experiences are not unique. Many people in my generation have had similar experiences being denied free access to books. As I grew up, I discovered that there was a censored part to nearly any debate, be it literature, art, politics, history, religion, philosophy, and so on. There was a part that the state didn't want us to see and there was another part that the state magnified before our eyes. There were books that were removed from school libraries and there were books for which we could win prizes if we read them. In my adult life as a poet and writer, I was reminded every day of the restrictions on free expression in various forms. I was asked not to read some particular poems in university poetry readings on numerous occasions. My first collection of poetry was rejected a publication licence and no one cared to explain why. When I finally managed to publish, I was forced to cut out nearly one fourth of each collection. I learnt to use different pseudonyms and adopt various personas to avoid censorship and its consequences. Gradually, censorship became a major preoccupation. I couldn't help but spend much time thinking about it and I found out I was not alone. In almost every gathering of Iranian poets and writers that I have attended during the past two decades, one major topic of discussion has been censorship. People had different perceptions of censorship and different evaluations of its effects. In some cases, immediate consequences of censorship were relatively easy to observe. When a newspaper was banned, I could see that a group of journalists lost their justify their act of censorship. The development of print and publication made censorship a task of major proportion and many governments created censorship departments to keep publications clean of undesirable material. The centralized censorship in modern Iran coincides with the birth of the press and the technical advancements which made publications accessible to a wider public in the midnineteenth century. Although censorship is vastly different today, both in scope and in effect, some underlying factors remain the same. The first official censorship department established in the mid-nineteenth century laid the foundation for the complex censorship apparatus at work today. There is a similar battle of ideas between advocates of freedom of speech versus the supporters of censorship which can be traced back to the early days of press and publication in Iran more than 150 years ago. Although the main focus of study in this book is the post-Revolutionary censorship, a short history of censorship in Iran will be of immense benefit to the readers and will help them understand the complexity of censorship regime in present day Iran. Chapter 1 offers a concise history of censorship in Iran from the beginning of the press -mid-nineteenth century -until the 1979 Revolution. As demonstrated in this chapter, during this period, Iran underwent huge social and political changes. The Constitutional Revolution (1905-1911) replaced an ancient idea of absolute rule with a constitutional monarchy and brought along new ideas such as liberty and equality. Censorship was lifted and publications boosted dramatically. When Reza Shah came to power in 1921, he decided that freedom of press had led to anarchy and a little control wouldn't harm. As he progressed on his project of modernization, he gradually became less tolerant of opposition views. Although Reza Shah hugely modernized Iran, freedom of expression suffered under his reign and censorship reached unprecedented levels of harshness. His successor Mohammad Reza Shah, who ruled between the years 1941-1979, took a different approach. He appeared to be committed to parliamentary constitutionalism and respected freedom of expression. Censorship was therefore relaxed and remained so until the 1953 coup and the overthrow of Dr Mosaddeq's government. The success of the coup not only interrupted the democratic functioning of the country but changed the Shah's attitude towards democracy and freedom of expression dramatically. He became suspicious of the intelligentsia and religious forces at the same time and adopted a strict censorship regime. Freedom of expression was seen as a security threat and silencing opposition voices was assigned to the infamous SAVAK -Secret Police -founded in 1957. The Revolution ended the monarchy in 1979 and a short-lived freedom characterized by abundant publication of previously banned books arrived. For around two years, there was rarely any control on the press and publications but as the new rulers seized power and overcame their secular opposition, they re-established a censorship regime to enforce their cultural policies. The first step was to pass laws and regulations to gain control over cultural institutions. The second chapter studies the laws on freedom of expression and how these laws shaped the policies which were then translated into projects and dictated guidelines for cultural authorities. The Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran guarantees freedom of expression except where 'it is ‫>گفتند-سینه-از-دست-رد-بر-سینه-اش-زد-حذف-شود‬ [accessed 12 July 2016]. "Censorship pervades all aspects of political, social and cultural life in the Islamic Republic of Iran. Faced with strict state control of cultural output, Iranian authors and writers have had to adapt their work to avoid falling foul of the censors. In this pioneering study, Alireza Abiz offers an in-depth, interdisciplinary analysis of how censorship and the political order of Iran have influenced contemporary Persian literature, both in terms of content and tone. As censorship is unrecorded and not officially acknowledged in Iran, the author has examined newspaper records and conducted first-hand interviews with Iranian poets and writers. looking into the ways in which poets and writers attempt to subvert the codes of censorship by using symbolism and figurative language to hide their more controversial messages. A ground-breaking analysis, this book will be vital reading for anyone interested in contemporary cultural politics and literature in Iran." -- Provided by publisher 1. A Brief History of Censorship in Iran from the Early Days of the Press until the 1979 Revolution -- 2. Laws, Theories and Policies of Censorship in the Islamic Republic of Iran -- 3. The Censor Machine: Strcuture and Mechanism, Operators, Changes and Variations -- 4. Censors at Work -- 5. Reward and Punishment: Different Tools for the Same End -- 6. How Do Writers and Poets React to Censorship? -- 7. How Is Censorship Affecting Iranian Literature? -- 8. Conclusion -- Notes and References -- Bibliography -- Index