he current controversy over the Indian movie Satluj has revived interest in the efficacy of censorship in modern societies.

The apparent goal of suppression is to stop a concept from reaching its intended audience. However, instead of stifling a narrative, censorship frequently ends up aiding its development, enlarging its audience and giving it a cultural relevance it might not have attained otherwise. An effort to remove a work from the public mind and to diminish the impact of an idea or restrict its audience, an act of prohibition – so the argument goes – serves indirectly the purpose of its most vehement advocate.

Subjected to censorship, a movie or book that may have garnered only mediocre interest, takes on an alluring sense of mystery. “Why are we being prevented from watching it?” people wonder. Often, the controversy becomes bigger news than the actual work.

Some famous instances of this phenomenon are worth examination. Ulysses by James Joyce faced publishing prohibitions in both the US and the UK early in the 20th Century. The novel became one of modernism’s most notable literary works. DH Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover remained banned for many years. Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago shot to fame after being rejected for publication in the Soviet Union. This was also a major factor in Pasternak’s 1958 Nobel Prize in literature.

Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary took a strikingly similar route. The novel was prosecuted for violating public decency in Nineteenth-Century France. It came out of the trial with more prestige than before. A similar fate befell some poems in Charles Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal, which were banned for perceived immorality.

Likewise, George Orwell’s Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four, restricted or outlawed by several political systems, are among the most read political allegories worldwide – their warnings against ideological control, surveillance, authoritarianism and propaganda have only become more potent over time.

Children’s books, too, have been subject to censorship. Due to its language and racial issues, Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has been frequently prohibited or challenged. This has also guaranteed it relevance in literary discourse.

The history of film is also full of such examples. Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange was banned in the UK over its depiction of violence. That only enhanced the film’s legendary stature. The Last Temptation of Christ by Martin Scorsese ignited protests and faced bans.

As a reaction to censorship, a movie or book that may have only garnered mediocre interest, takes on an alluring mystery.

In the ancient world, too, ideas grew stronger when they were suppressed. Despite leaving no written writings, Socrates became one of the greatest philosophers in history after Athens voted to execute him. His death forced others, including Plato, to develop and maintain his ideas. It is not clear whether Socrates may have had as great an impact if he had lived quietly into old age. His ideas apparently entered history through opposition.

There are comparable instances in the history of religions as well. Communities were able to withstand persecution because they were driven to copy, preserve and spread early Christian writings. During the Protestant Reformation, the Catholic Church’s Index Librorum Prohibitorum made an effort to regulate dangerous literature. Many of the prohibited books continued to be published throughout Europe and occasionally acquired additional respect among scholars as a result of their listing.

The instances support the idea that censorship is self-defeating. What is left out in this narrative is the specific contexts. Also, there is no reason to suppose that the intellectual drive is best served by absolute permissiveness.

Those eager to draw obvious conclusions from Socrates’ persecution may have a hard time explaining why, despite the sage’s enormous popularity, an overwhelming majority of people are NOT expected in similar circumstances to behave like Socrates.

This is reason enough to be wary of dismissing all value-systems as arbitrary. At the bottom of all the attempts to do away with bias and prejudice, there would be a persistent sense of some ideas being inherently flawed, morally repulsive or tyrannical.

Great works of art – like the ones listed above – will find their way into the sanctified realm of culture and – with the passage of time – tradition, with or without censorship. But while many aspire to be the Joyces and Lawrences of their times, very few have the romantic substance, the depth of ideas, the command over language and artistic ingenuity in general to realise such dreams. Subversive minds requiring censorship, meanwhile, abound.

It would be a mistake to support authors and works who may have nothing to recommend them other than their ability to be as provocative as true geniuses sometimes are. For every luminary in the list of great minds/ texts cited above, there have been tens of thousands unworthy hacks the history has justifiably forgotten.

Many humans are, unfortunately, irrationally curious. To use the misfortune as grounds for arguing against the need for censorship is wrong.

The writer is a post-doctoral fellow at the Islamic Research Institute, International  Islamic University, Islamabad, and the head of the Department of English Language and Literature at the University of Lahore.