Thaindian News

New Delhi, Jan 24 (IANS) Author Salman Rushdie Tuesday said he was shocked that even his video-conference address at the Jaipur Literature Festival was unacceptable and termed the entire controversy a “black farce”. He also asserted he will come back to India.

“The Satanic Verses” author said the real enemies of Islam were its extremist leaders, and blamed the Indian government for giving into them. He also called the threat to his life “fabricated” and termed himself foolish for believing it.

“It was pretty shocking that not only my physical presence, even the screening of video image was unacceptable,” Rushdie said from London in a video conference interview to NDTV Group Editor Barkha Dutt.

“I have my personal disappointment (for not being permitted to attend the festival),” he said, adding he was more disappointed at Indian authorities’ attitude.

“There is a lot of personal disappointment, but overwhelmingly for India, which has been committed to secularism and liberty. Politicians are in bed with those groups for electoral reasons. This decline in the liberty of ordinary citizens to hear different points of view makes me saddest,” he said.

Rushdie asserted that he will come back to India, which he has visited many times in the last 8-9 years.

“It won’t stop me from coming to India. It’ll take more to prevent me,” he added.

He said that “the real enemies of Islam are maulvis and the extremists because they reiterate the image of Islam as intolerant religion”, and it is them who “should be called enemies of the faith”.

Rushdie observed that the Deoband seminary, which opposed his visit, is “from where the Taliban got their ideology”.

The author said he felt like a fool to have believed the reported threat to his life.

He said an e-mail from organisers was sent to him which talked of the likelihood of protests, and intelligence from Maharashtra that a Mumbai mafia don had sent hit men to eliminate him.

“They sent me three names. One of them, Saquib Nachan, who was identified as SIMI (Students Islamic Movement of India) member, had no known contacts to underworld. The other two had never been heard of. These were non-existent names. The Bombay mafia don had given weapons to people who didn’t even exist.”

“The centre denied it, the Mumbai police denied it, some in Rajasthan denied it. But I was sent this with knowledge of senior officials. It is a very, very poor state of affairs,” he said.

He said the way in which the Congress, heading both the central and Rajasthan governments, and many other parties stated their opposition, he “felt confident that some way would be found to prevent him from coming”.

“And sadly it was.”

He thanked the writers who read from “The Satanic Verses”, banned in 1988, for “solidarity and support”.

Noting the book was recently published in Turkey and Egypt and un-banned in Libya, he said: “Yet in India, after 24 years, the ban still survives. Does India want to be a totalitarian state like China or move towards liberty of ideas?”

“If you don’t have freedom of expression, you have no other freedom.”

On the 31 years since publication of his “Midnight’s Children”, he said: “Though things may have improved economically, culturally, in terms of liberty, India is in a much worse place.”

“Since the Emergency, politicians across the spectrum have begun to move away from secular principles and begun to pander to religious groups of one or the other kind,” Rushdie said.

“The two forces’ coming together has had negative effect on public life.”