Indian Muslim Cleric Demands Rushdie Be Denied Visa
Salman Rushdie and His Controversial Book
Indian controversial writer Salman Rushdie on Tuesday was in the center of a scandal as an influential Muslim cleric from a conservative seminary in the northern city of Deoband demanded that Rushdie, who lives in England, be denied the visa because of the fact that in the past he has hurt the feelings of all the Muslim believers.
Rushdie, 64, is expected to speak at the Jaipur festival, the largest literary festival in Asia and a major moment in the international tour he is having in the region. In the Jaipur festival he is expected to speak about “Inglish, Amlish, Hinglish: the Chutneyfication of English.”
Maulana Abdul Qasim Nomani, vice chancellor at the Darul Uloom Deoband Seminary, reminded of The Satanic Verses, a book Rushdie wrote in 1988, and which was banned in India and determined the Iranian Ayatollah Khomeini to proclaim a fatwa by which the Indian writer was sentenced to death for what was considered a blasphemous text taken from an early biography of the Prophet about the incorporation of pagan goddesses into the Islamic monotheist structure.
Salman Rushdie went into hiding and stayed that way for a decade, when Iran said, in 1998, that it was no longer interested in killing him. The fatwa was reversed in 2005 by the incumbent theocrat Ali Khamenei, not before it claimed the lives of translators all over the world: the Japanese translator was stubbed to death in 1991; the same year, the Italian translator was beaten and stabbed in Milan; in 1993 the Norwegian publisher was shot and wounded; an attempt to kill the Turkish translator cost the lives of thirty-seven guests at the Sivas hotel, which was torched to this purpose.
The Indian cleric said that if the visa is not revoked for the famous novelist, he would apply to the external affairs minister, to the Indian prime minister and to the Congress president Sonia Gandhi, in hopes to determine them to prevent Rushdie from coming and lecturing on Indian soil.
In 2007, Rushdie lectured in the Jaipur festival, and a similar controversy aroused then. He seems to be unaffected by the controversy, reminding that he did not need any visa to come to India.
An Indian journalist spoke on Twitter about the visit, and called the dispute “ridiculous controversy” demanding his people to “grow up, India.”
The organizers of the festival said that the writer will “absolutely” attend, and that the Jaipur festival was a democratic platform for the expression of the literary talent and freedom of speech.
The difference between the attendance in 2007 and the one in 2012 seems to be made by the political importance of the moment, with elections in the largest Indian state Uttar Pradesh, where some 150 million Muslim live. This compelled both Congress politicians and members of the opposition to back the call for banning Rushdie.
