WOULD HE participate or not, the question bothered organisers of the Jaipur Literary Festival for days. Everyone was keen that Salman Rushdie should put in his appearance, address the delegates like he had done in earlier years and then go back to his loved ones unharmed. But that was not to be.

 

Notwithstanding keenness on the part of the organisers as well as the speakers, Rushdie was advised at the highest level, as well as by the intelligence sleuths that his appearance at the festival might spell bloodshed. Rushdie did not want to lose life just for nothing. So, on the morning of the inaugural ceremony, he made up his mind not to visit Jaipur.

 

Rushdie, a person of Indian origin and a celebrated writer needs no visa to enter India. Yet there was a cry by ignorant Muslim clerics urging the government to cancel his visa. How could a non-existent document be cancelled? No reply from both diehards and liberals was forthcoming on this issue. The matter was allowed to die a natural death, albeit slowly.

 

Rushdie, a non-conformist Muslim, became the bete-noire of Iranian Khomeinis and mullahs of Islamic world when he wrote and published his blasphemous novel, Satanic Verses. A fatwa, religious edict, was issued to kill him but he remained unharmed because the British authorities protected him like a royalty. Dozens of people were killed in the protests after the novel was published in late eighties. The book was ultimately banned in all Muslim countries except Turkey. It was even banned in India.

 

What a shame the government failed to promise adequate protection to the award winning author. The so called secular govt buckled under the threats of Muslim extremists. Some liberals protested against govt inaction but it was so feeble that it failed to make an impact. The liberal writers ike Hari Kunzru expressed that he would defend freedom of thought and expression as guaranteed by Islam.