There have been many losses in this last decade but the loss of the
easy return to India has been for me an absolute anguish, an inescapable
anguish. I feel as if I've lost a limb. I am very anxious to bring that period
to an end.
-Salman Rushdie(1997)
Weeks back when I was
told that “The” Salman Rushdie will speak at Jaipur in a literary fest I was
all pity for myself, I lamented being at Hyderabad, lamented the absence of a
literature festival in the city of the IT boom and IIT aspirants, I even
contemplated a weekend in the desert state. Thankfully I never formalized the
plans.
Zembla, Zenda, Xanadu:
All our dream-worlds may
come true.
Fairy lands are fearsome
too.
As I wander far from view
Read, and bring me home to you. –Salman Rushdie (Haroun & the Sea of
Stories)
In Jaipur for now, Salman
Rushdie is off the plates, period. The country that banned his book with a fool’s
alacrity, decades back has cautiously gagged him on this occasion. The
nincompoop fatwa-wallahs who, characteristically are offering decorations to
shoe throwers, and a chickening government assured that one of my favorite
authors shall not be allowed to speak his mind in the country where offence is
bought at the price of peanuts. The agitations against the Satanic Verses
started in India weeks before the book was released based on an article in a
weekly, and this time around the Deoband asked government to deny visa to
Salman Rushdie when he doesn’t need one to travel to India. The whole business
of sensibilities is being dragged too far, the piece of literature in question
was banned years back, and now, for no justifiable reason the author’s freedom
of movement and conversation is being compromised.
While some religious
clerics have repeatedly displayed incredible unease over varying interpretation
of theologies and philosophy, the government has matched in its unwillingness
to stand up for the right of expressions.
While I hoped that the government would show some spine on this occasion
I had always feared it won’t, and it didn’t.
The clergy shall
continue to take offence at anything remotely uncomfortable, they will typically
retort with the whimsy impulse of the possessed but common sense will prevail
in this nation of argumentative.
… India is not Iran, it's not even Pakistan, and I thought good
sense will prevail in India because that's my life experience of Indian people
and of the place.
–Salman Rushdie (to India Today)
1 Comments:
when religion is distorted against the intellect which led to its genesis, and
the state fears right action for the risks of losing support
ART watches quiet the sad demise of the persuit of what the highest creation of cosmos had been engaged in
ever since civilisation began.
Lets hope the good sense prevails in Jaipur.
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