Satanic scandal
January 17, 2012
The Internet has gone viral. Protest messages have flooded cyberspace since the organizers of the Jaipur Literary Festival said that Booker Prize winner Salman Rushdie's name had been dropped from the online program for security reasons.
The 65-year-old author was all set to grace the largest literature fest in the Asia-Pacific but on Tuesday organizers said the controversial writer would not be in India after all. However, they insisted that the invitation still stood.
'Satanic'
Salman Rushdie's planned appearance at the festival, which attracts tens of thousands of book lovers to Jaipur's plush Diggi Palace hotel every year, had sparked an outcry among some Muslims.
The writer has been extremely unpopular with Islamic hardliners since 1988 when he published his controversial book "The Satanic Verses." He was criticized for alleged "blasphemy" against Prophet Mohammed and India was among the first countries to ban the book.
When his attendance in Jaipur was made known, the Darul Uloom Deoband - India's biggest Islamic seminary - demanded that he be denied entry, calling for protest sit-ins and alongside other radical groups offering a cash reward to anyone who hurled a shoe at Rushdie.
Sensing the political climate and with an eye on the impending and crucial Uttar Pradesh elections, where Muslims form a bulwark of votes, both the Congress party and the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), bowed to pressure and worked actively to disrupt the visit.
"We will not let an author who presented wrong facts about Prophet Mohammad enter the city," declared the general secretary of the BJP, Munawwar Khan.
'Shame'
On Tuesday, it looked as if the pressure had worked. But for many, Rushdie was the main draw of the event that kicks off on January 20 and they are outraged. "Each time we ban a book or blacklist an author, we betray the principles that our society is founded," the noted columnist Vir Sanghvi posted online.
"The passive role of the government - at both the central and the state level - and its buckling to cynical political blackmail shows up the slimy cowardice of the soft state," argued Venky Vembu in FirstPost.
"The argument for welcoming Rushdie to Jaipur is a simple one," said critic Nilanjana S Roy, who is a festival regular. "His early works, which include 'Midnight's Children,' 'Shame' and 'The Satanic Verses,' are unsettling and uncomfortable, and we need that discomfort much more in 2012 than we need the safe formulas of the new bestsellers."
Manish Tripati, a literary agent, argued that free speech was at risk in the world’s most populous democracy. "The sensitivity doesn't just concern Islam," he told Deutsche Welle. "India's foremost painter, Maqbool Fida Husain, was forced to give up his Indian nationality and died elsewhere. Intolerance is very often rooted in ignorance and fear of the unknown."
Author: Murali Krishnan
Editor: Anne Thomas