Supreme Court Rejects Plea Against Arundhati Roy’s Book Cover Showing Her Smoking Beedi

Arundhati Roy Book: The Supreme Court on Friday has refused to hear a petition challenging a Kerala High Court order that dismissed a case against Arundhati Roy’s book ‘Mother Mary Comes To Me.’ The petition objected to the book’s cover, which shows Roy smoking a beedi. A bench of Chief Justice of India Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi said that disagreeing with an author’s views is not a valid reason to start legal action. 

The CJI said that the author was an eminent figure with a strong reputation in the literary world and that the publisher was also well-known.

He remarked that the book does not promote tobacco in any way. He asked why the petitioner had a problem with it and suggested the issue was being raised only for publicity.

The Court upheld the Kerala High Court’s earlier order, which noted that the publisher had already placed a disclaimer on the back cover stating that the image was not meant to promote tobacco use.

The bench noted that the book, the publication, and the author have nothing to do with tobacco advertising. It added that merely having such a photograph on the cover cannot be considered promotion. 

The plea accused author Arundhati Roy and her publisher Penguin Random House India (Hamish Hamilton) of glamorising tobacco use by featuring a photograph of her with a beedi on the front cover of her book Mother Mary Comes to Me to promote the work.

The plea alleged that the photograph of Roy smoking on the book’s cover violated the tobacco advertising law (COTPA 2003). During the hearing, the lawyer argued that they did not know whether she was smoking a ‘gaja beedi’ or a normal beedi, but she was clearly shown smoking. 

The plea alleged that Arundhati Roy’s new book cover shows her smoking a cigarette but does not carry any statutory warning—such as ‘Smoking is injurious to health’—which is mandatory on cigarette or tobacco packets.

Earlier, Penguin Publication informed the Kerala High Court that a warning is printed on the back side of the book. The back cover states that smoking is injurious to health and that Penguin does not endorse the use of tobacco in any form.

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