Outrage over Rushdie cancellation

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British playwright Tom Stoppard (left) and festival director William Dalrymple during a session at the litfest in Jaipur on Tues

Several authors and artists on Monday voiced their outrage over the cancellation of a video address by Salman Rushdie at the Jaipur Literature Festival, accusing the Rajasthan government of “abject surrender” to threats of violence by “fringe elements”.
Some Muslim groups insisted that Rushdie should apologise to the nation for his alleged blasphemous content in his book Satanic Verses, saying it has hurt the sentiments of Muslims across the world.
The organisers called off Rushdie’s video address in the afternoon, saying some Muslim groups had warned that their could be violence if this was allowed.
The social networking sites were abuzz with protests over the cancellation of the programme with some people posting the e-version of the novel banned in 1988 as a mark of protest.
Filmmaker Shekhar Kapoor was one among the first to hit the Twitter asking, “So Salman Rushdie has won n Indian democracy lost. How immature can we be? In banning Rushdie all we have succeeded in doing is making him into a hero and us immature.”
Comments like “Salman Rushdie’s own book title has come back to haunt the entire nation: “Shame” and normally the guilty are brought to book. But in this Salman Rushdie issue, maybe the book should be brought to the guilty” were a rage on the social networking sites.
Noted economist Lord Meghnad Desai accused the Congress of not doing enough and said, “I will say the Congress party, not just the Central government, did this to grab a few votes in UP elections. Its an abject surrender.”
Dubbing this as “dubious”, author Kiran Nagarkar said, “Salman Rushdie by now must be so fed up with the way things are carried on.”
M.F. Husain’s artist-son Shamsad Husain described the episode as “awful” and said people who are protesting have no idea about what they are doing.
“I’m sure they haven’t even read the story. These protests are led by unscruplous elements who have no business at all but to protest. This is terrible.
“What I don’t underastand is why do people proptest years after the work was actually done. Proptests erupted over my father’s painting which he did in 1976 in the 90’s. Same thing has happened to Salman,” he told PTI.
Kamal Farooqi, All India Muslim Personal Law Board, said they will continue the protest against Rusdhie as long as he “does not apologise to the entire community. The book is here and we will continue to protest”.
Zafaryab Gilani, legal advisor of Personal Law Board, said, “We had only demand that he should not be allowed to come to India because he, according to us, has committed an offence under Indian Penal Code.”
BJP said the entire episode exposed the “worst communal vote-bank politics” of Congress. “Rushdie episode has exposed Congress for its worst communal vote-bank politics...The move to ask four authors to pack up and leave Jaipur was also an attack on freedom of speech,” BJP spokesperson Prakash Javadekar said.
“The attempt to block the video link also must be viewed from vote-bank politics angle. It also exposed Congress of its real intentions to impose censorship on Internet communication,” he added. Rubbishing BJP charge that it was “match fixing” by the Congress and the intelligence agencies, Congress general secretary Digvijay Singh said, “there is no question of match fixing. Satanic Verses has been banned by the government of India and the ban continues.
“To quote from a banned book whether it violates any law has to be seen by the state government.”
Janata Party president Subramanian Swamy said the Central government should be thoroughly condemned for the episode. “The fight for democratic freedoms can succeed only when there is eternal vigilance and a commitment to defend even those with whom we do not agree,” he said.