This film speaks for itself.

Made in the memory of writers Narendra Dabholkar, Govind Pansare and MM Kalburgi – all of them killed for their uncompromising adherence to liberal, rational thinking – The Bookshelf is a wordless short film directed by Sandeep Ravindranath. Made with support from Kalachuvadu, a Tamil Nadu-based publisher, the film opens with a shot of a well-stacked bookshelf.

The choice of titles – including P Murugan's One Part Woman, DH Lawrence's Lady Chatterly's Lover, Tamal Bandyopadhyay's Sahara: The Untold Story , BR Ambedkar's Annihilation of Caste, Javier Moro's The Red Sari, Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses – makes it clear what's going on: all of these are books that have faced bans, attacks and other attempts at muzzling.

Each and every one of these "controversial" books is picked out of the shelf, burnt and crucified to leave behind the detritus of a ruined collection, a situation that future generations could inherit. What's left behind is a small, worrying selection.