Roald Dahl, the legendary author of children’s books, and Francis Bacon, a British figurative painter, had a 40-yearold conversation at Dahl’s home in Great Missenden, Buckinghamshire, which recently went viral. “When I am gone, if that [making any alteration in the text] happens, then I’ll wish mighty Thor knocks very hard on their [publishers’] heads with his Mjolnir [hammer]. Or I will send along the ‘enormous crocodile’ to gobble them up,” Dahl stated during the conversation. Dahl was undoubtedly alluding to his Norwegian heritage, and “The Enormous Crocodile” refers to his earlier story on “the greediest croc in the whole river.”

Yet, 22 years after Dahl’s passing, The Roald Dahl Story Company and his publisher Puffin, the children’s imprint of Penguin Random House, made many edits to his words and texts so that they “can continue to be enjoyed by all today.” Such a censoring of Roald Dahl in relation to weight, mental health, violence, gender, and race sparked a great deal of outrage in Britain and elsewhere. It ought to be so. Roald Dahl is not your typical author; his books have been translated into at least 63 different languages. More than 300 million copies of the books of “The World’s No. 1 Storyteller,” as he was known, have been sold so far. According to Forbes, he was the highest-paid deceased celebrity in 2021. Salman Rushdie, the Booker Prize-winning novelist, and Penguin Random House author, described it as “absurd censorship,” and Rushdie is no stranger to the censorship controversy.

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Even Rishi Sunak joined the chorus of “We shouldn’t gobblefunk around with words.” PEN America, a community of 7,500 writers that advocates for freedom of expression, became “alarmed,” and deputy literary editor of the Sunday Times Laura Hackett referred to it as “botched surgery.”

How are the changes going? No longer “enormously fat,” Augustus Gloop from “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” is now only “enormous.” In “The Twits,” Mrs. Twit is no longer “ugly and beastly,” only “beastly,” and “we eat little boys and girls” has been modified to “we eat little children” in “The Enormous Crocodile.” “Matilda” reads Jane Austen instead of Rudyard Kipling. And Matilda isn’t accompanying Kipling to India in this revised version. As society’s awareness of mental health developed, words like “crazy” and “mad” were also altered.

Yet, censoring and editing books is nothing new. In 1807, English physician Thomas Bowdler published “The Family Shakespeare,” an expurgated edition of 20 of Shakespeare’s plays edited by his sister Henrietta Maria Bowdler, which removed “words and expressions… which cannot with propriety be read aloud in a family,” particularly in front of women and children. Since then, the term “bowdlerising” has evolved to describe the process of expurgating or omitting content from literature, films, and television that is thought inappropriate for children for moral reasons.

There have been numerous bowdlerisations in Enid Blyton’s books in the past four decades, notably in “The Faraway Tree” and “The Famous Five series.” In 2021, the company that preserves the author’s legacy has said that six Dr. Seuss books will no longer be published because of racially insensitive imagery. This decision sparked criticism from certain observers, who said that stopping publications was an example of “cancel culture.” J.K. Rowling has frequently come under fire for her “transphobic” opinions. Both Hergé’s “Tintin in the Congo” and Agatha Christie’s murder mystery “And Then There Were None” have long been accused of racism. And undoubtedly a lot more novels by many more well-known authors.

During his lifetime, Dahl has given his approval for changes to his writing. From black pygmies in the original 1964 version, the Oompa-Loompas of “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” became green-haired, orange-skinned characters for Mel Stuart’s 1971 film adaptation, and they were transformed into “little fantasy creatures” in the 1973 edition of the book. The changes were made after pressure from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and children’s literature professionals.

Roald Dahl definitely “was no angel,” as Salman Rushdie remarked. For years, many have criticized Dahl for having antisemitic sentiments. But as Dahl reminded Francis Bacon in the 1982 meeting, “[t]here must be no changes to an artist’s original work when he is dead for any reason whatsoever.” The author commented, “I just hope to God that will never happen to any of my writings as I am lying comfortably in my Viking grave.”

Thus, the more general question is: Should a writer’s writing be changed in any way? “Words matter,” publisher Puffin declared in a statement included inside the books. Indeed. Also, these books might be seen as “cultural artefacts” that have historical significance. Are we not obscuring the critical perspective that literature offers on society by practicing such censorship? A number of reviewers have argued that in Roald Dahl’s case, the “offending” lines cannot be understood in isolation since they are a part of Dahl’s world of dark humour, rebellion, and mischief, and the introduction of moralistic insipidities is in conflict with the spirit of the novels. Some people have even suggested that a nice compromise for books that aren’t changed could be a disclaimer at the start, like the ones Warner Bros. uses at the beginning of some of their cartoons, one that informs the audience that the attitudes and language are a reflection of their time and aren’t okay now. Thus, rather than hoping to rewrite history, should adults help children navigate it?

Yet, not everybody is critical of the “botched surgery” of Dahl’s perceived insensitive words and texts. Billy Bragg, the English singer-songwriter and activist, for instance, endorsed the modifications made to the 2022 editions: “Suppose your mum wears a hairpiece due to chemotherapy and kids in your class call her a witch because they read in Dahl’s book that witches all wear wigs.”

Philip Nel, a scholar of children’s literature and comics, explores how children’s literature obscures its racialized origins in his 2019 book, “Was the Cat in the Hat Black: The Hidden Racism of Children’s Literature, and the Need for Diverse Books Annotated Edition.” He concludes with a succinct and direct proposal of actions everyone – readers, authors, publishers, scholars, and citizens – can take to combat the biases and prejudices that infect children’s literature.

Notwithstanding the absence of the powerful Thor or the greedy crocodile, there was clearly a great deal of public outrage. In response to the criticism, Dahl’s publisher Puffin has chosen to publish his works in their original forms alongside new texts, thus leaving readers “free to choose which version they prefer.” This decision was hailed as an “extraordinary win” for the reporters who broke the original story and for those who expressed outrage, and it has been widely criticized. Of course, some noted that Puffin could generate even more revenue from Dahl’s books if two sets of editions were available for purchase.

My college-bound daughter, who spent a lot of pleasant hours in her childhood in Roald Dahl’s universe, was curious about which version would ultimately prevail. Sincerity is told, I don’t know. Some people think Dahl’s novels contain some terms that parents should be aware of and protect their kids from. Again, many think censorship is curtailing the freedom of expression as well as painting an unreal (and hence unsafe) worldview for the young and mature alike. Let’s see how these two opposing viewpoints coexist in society.

(The writer is Professor of Statistics, Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata.)