IMPORTANT POINTS
Pragmatic realism should be understood in the context of creativity.
A book should not be read in a fragmented manner, it has to be read as a whole. Subjective perception of a book as regards its worth and evaluation cannot be a ground for censorship or ban of a book.

JUDGMENT

Dipak Misra, CJI

A writer or an author, while choosing a mode of expression, be it a novel or a novella, an epic or an anthology of poems, a play or a playlet, a short story or a long one, an essay or a statement of description or, for that matter, some other form, has the right to exercise his liberty to the fullest unless it falls foul of any prescribed law that is constitutionally valid. It is because freedom of expression is extremely dear to a civilized society. It holds it close to its heart and would abhorrently look at any step taken to create even the slightest concavity in the said freedom. It may be noted here that we are in this writ petition, preferred under Article 32 of the Constitution, dealing with creativity and its impact and further considering the prayer for banning a book on the foundation that a part of it is indecent and offends the sentiments of women of a particular faith. Having said this, we would like to refer to two authorities highlighting the importance of creativity and necessity of freedom of expression and how the principle of pragmatic realism assures the said creative independence as civilization, indubitably a progressive one, perceives and eagerly desires for its accentuated protection, nourishment and constant fostering. It is so because curtailment of an author’s right to freedom of expression is a matter of serious concern.

2. In Devidas Ramachandra Tuljapurkar v. State of Maharashtra and others, (2015) 6 SCC 1 the Court, dealing with the meaning of the words “poetic licence”, observed: -

“… it can never remotely mean a licence as used or understood in the language of law. There is no authority who gives a licence to a poet. These are words from the realm of literature. The poet assumes his own freedom which is allowed to him by the fundamental concept of poetry. He is free to depart from reality; fly away from grammar; walk in glory by not following systematic metres; coin words at his own will; use archaic words to convey thoughts or attribute meanings; hide ideas beyond myths which can be absolutely unrealistic; totally pave a path where neither rhyme nor rhythm prevail; can put serious ideas in satires, ifferisms, notorious repartees; take aid of analogies, metaphors, similes in his own style, compare like “life with sandwiches that is consumed everyday” or “life is like peeling of an onion”, or “society is like a stew”; define ideas that can balloon into the sky never to come down; cause violence to logic at his own fancy; escape to the sphere of figurative truism; get engrossed in the “universal eye for resemblance”, and one can do nothing except writing a critical appreciation in his own manner and according to his understanding. When a poet says “I saw eternity yesterday night”, no reader would understand the term “eternity” in its prosaic sense. The Hamletian question has many a layer; each is free to confer a meaning; be it traditional or modern or individualistic. No one can stop a dramatist or a poet or a writer to write freely expressing his thoughts, and similarly none can stop the critics to give their comments whatever its worth. One may concentrate on Classical facets and one may think at a metaphysical level or concentrate on Romanticism as is understood in the poems of Keats, Byron or Shelley or one may dwell on Nature and write poems like William Wordsworth whose poems, say some, are didactic. One may also venture to compose like Alexander Pope or Dryden or get into individual modernism like Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot or Pablo Neruda. That is fundamentally what is meant by poetic licence.”

3. In Raj Kapoor and others v. State and others, (1980) 1 SCC 43 Krishna Iyer, J., speaking for himself, while quashing the criminal proceedings initiated against the petitioner therein for the production of the film, namely, ‘Satyam, Sivam, Sundaram’, observed:-

“12. … Jurisprudentially speaking, law, in the sense of command to do or not to do, must be a reflection of the comm