The Vivekean Times

If Dan Brown had joined the Jaipur literary festival he would have been greeted with huge fanfare and the red carpet would have been laid out for him by both the state and central governments. Chetan Bhagat would be heaping praises on him and his works, and protests if any would be too weak to mention. Every author reading his works would become best-selling authors and no one would even think of arresting them. But why should it be otherwise, you might ask? He didn’t do anything wrong, did he? I mean, you would say, what Salman Rushdie wrote in Satanic Verses hurt the religious sentiments of Muslims and so it was justifiably banned. None of Dan Brown’s books were banned. And therein lies the root of the issue. Why wasn’t “The Da Vinci Code” banned (I have a borrowed copy of the work lying at my home at present) and the movement of the author restricted? Didn’t the Da Vinci Code hurt the religious sentiments of Catholics around the world? Then why didn’t the state and central gove...

There was one book published in the recent past that sparked much debate and was criticized by historians, church-goers, mathematicians, book critics, and various other tribes of mortals. The charges against the book ranged from poor research to blasphemy to church-bashing to plagiarism. There were other charges such as poor plot construction and lack of technical, historical and geographical knowledge. I have provided links to some of these articles below. Well, if you go through these list of errors and falsehoods, it looks like 99% of the book is inaccurate against the "99% accuracy" claim of the author. However, the book became a best-seller and this goes to show that well-packaged church-bashing can do wonders for an author. Before the Da Vinci Code, none of Dan's three earlier books had sold more than 10,000 copies or should I be more Brown-like and say 10 copies or no copies at all. Well, at least he did not plagiarise his work from two books of non...