Salman Rushdie regrets pulling out of literary festival after fabricated death threats.
Sir Salman Rushdie has been told he is the target of Mumbai assassins
Last Friday the novelist Salman Rushdie pulled out of a planned appearance at the Jaipur literary festival in Rajasthan, India citing specific death threats made against him. Although the Indian-born author has visited the country a number of times in recent years and attended Jaipur in 2007 without incident, his novel The Satanic Verses is still banned in India and last week the head of an influential Islamic seminary in Deoband had demanded that he be refused entry.
But it was only when Rajasthan police told festival organisers that two underworld hit men called Altaf Batli and Aslam Kongo had been hired by a known Islamist to kill Rushdie, that the author said he would not be coming.
The case grew murkier on Saturday when the director-general of the Mahrashta police (in charge of dealing with the Mumbai underworld) denied any knowledge of a plot: "When we had no information that gangsters or paid assassins from the Mumbai underworld had planned to eliminate Mr Rushdie,” he told The Hindu, “how could we have shared it with anybody?”
Rushdie expressed his frustration on Twitter on Sunday, writing that "I've investigated, & believe that I was indeed lied to. I am outraged and very angry."
Quite why the police would fabricate such an elaborate plot is unclear, but there are theories that it may have been an effort to curry favour with Muslim voters in an upcoming state election.
Many other writers at the festival, including the British novelist Hari Kunzru, were upset at what they saw as intimidatory censorship. On Saturday afternoon, Kunzru and the Indian journalist Amitava Kumar decided (without the permission of the festival organisers, they later admitted) to stage a reading from The Satanic Verses.
Though it is illegal to publish, sell or own a copy of the novel, they said they believed they were allowed to read from it. Out of sensitivity they did not choose the supposedly blasphemous passages that refer to the Prophet Mohammed. Nevertheless Sanjoy Roy, who runs Jaipur with British travel writer William Dalrymple, pulled them quickly off the stage. They advised Kunzru to leave India immediately as he had broken a colonial-era law by reading from a banned book.
Dalrymple, who had invited Rushdie to the festival and had stoutly defended his right to speak in India, was criticised for not allowed the reading to continue. Speaking to an Indian newspaper, he said he was worried the whole festival would have been closed down. "We cannot act outside the law," he said. "A closure of the festival would not have been a victory; it would have meant defeat. So, much as I dislike having to stop the reading and all that, it had to be done."
A compromise of sorts was reached today when it was announced that Rushdie would appear at the festival via a video link.
This autumn Rushdie publishes a long-awaited memoir about his years in hiding after the 1990 death sentence imposed on him by Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini.
Though it is illegal to publish, sell or own a copy of the novel, they said they believed they were allowed to read from it. Out of sensitivity they did not choose the supposedly blasphemous passages that refer to the Prophet Mohammed. Nevertheless Sanjoy Roy, who runs Jaipur with British travel writer William Dalrymple, pulled them quickly off the stage. They advised Kunzru to leave India immediately as he had broken a colonial-era law by reading from a banned book.
Dalrymple, who had invited Rushdie to the festival and had stoutly defended his right to speak in India, was criticised for not allowed the reading to continue. Speaking to an Indian newspaper, he said he was worried the whole festival would have been closed down. "We cannot act outside the law," he said. "A closure of the festival would not have been a victory; it would have meant defeat. So, much as I dislike having to stop the reading and all that, it had to be done."
A compromise of sorts was reached today when it was announced that Rushdie would appear at the festival via a video link.
This autumn Rushdie publishes a long-awaited memoir about his years in hiding after the 1990 death sentence imposed on him by Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini.
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