TeaSalman Rushdie’s nearly fatal stabbing on stage in New York on August 12 was not an act of vandalism alone. It was the culmination of a long movement that included many others besides the attacker Hadi Matar. The knife that Pea stabbed Rushdie in the neck and stomach had been sharpened by the regressive and insufficiently Progressive Coalition for more than three decades.
in writing and publishing The Satanic Verses, Rushdie chose not to hurt anyone. Many of the reactionaries worked very hard to stir themselves into a state of unbearable outrage. And an embarrassingly large number of literary, cultural and political luminaries have given their shoulders to blood-seeking victim pornographers—and scolded Rushdie for inflicting their bloodshed.
Rajiv Gandhi, despite commanding the largest parliamentary majority in the history of India, immediately acceded to the demand to prosecute The Satanic Verses Because it was, in the words of MP Syed Shahabuddin, “a deliberate insult to Islam and the Holy Prophet and a deliberate device to outrage religious sentiments”. Shahabuddin claimed that the absence of “literary creativity” in the novel would become apparent to anyone reading it – before admitting that he had not actually read it.
Dispelling Muslims who urged not to bow down to self-styled godmen, Rajiv surrendered voluntarily: on 5 October 1988, his finance minister said The Satanic Verses in the list of prohibited items. In the unforgettable words of Badruddin Tyabji, what happened was, “A Coup Theater In a comedy played by a group of deaf actors under the direction of a blind director. The blind have not read the script and the deaf have only understood the sign language of election-making.
Khomeini’s call, the west turned cold
India’s decision demonstrated that surrender to fundamentalists does not end fanaticism: it only encourages them. Banned effectively four months after Rajiv Gandhi – on Valentines Day 1989 The Satanic Verses– Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini on Tehran Radio “informs the proud Muslim people of the world that the author The Satanic Verses The book, which is against Islam, the Prophet and the Qur’an, and all those involved in its publication who are aware of its contents, are punished with death”.
Instead of condemning the Ayatollah for encouraging his native theologians everywhere to kill a private citizen of another country for the sin of writing a novel, many Westerners paraded their contempt for Rushdie. .. to write a novel. Roald Dahl accused Rushdie of being a cheap sensation. Germaine Greer didn’t have time for “that book of hers.” And solitary detective novelist John le Carr advances the absurd advice that Rushdie should take back his book and soothe his anguish.
Such reactionary condemnation of Rushdie was characteristic of those who, unaware of themselves, naturally felt superior to the community whose sensibilities accused Rushdie of humiliating them. Britain’s foreign secretary at the time, Geoffrey Howe, took pains to reassure Tehran that the British people “have no affection for the book”.
Even Jimmy Carter chimed in – though his condemnation of Iran, if it could be called so, was so deserved that it’s hard to tell which side he was on. Before casting some mild criticism on Khomeini, Carter explicitly declared that “the Book of Rushdie is a direct insult to the millions of Muslims whose sacred beliefs have been violated.” Carter pranks himself by speaking in the name of “millions” of Muslims whose reading habits he may not have known to characterize a novel of magical realism—where the supposedly scandalous action takes place in a dazed character’s dream. As aggressive.
Read also: Supporting Salman Rushdie in Bangladesh was not easy. Then I realized fatwas are contagious
extension of cowardice
The cowardice of the governments was matched by the brutality of the mob. Rushdie—in the words of Julian Barnes, crookedly protected by Western establishments radiating a “glacial indifference” to his fate—miraculously escaped death. Others, alas, were less fortunate. Hitoshi Igarashi, the Japanese translator of the novel, was assassinated; Its Norwegian publisher, William Nygaard, was shot but survived; Its Italian translator, Ettore Capriolo, was attacked with knives; And 37 people lost their lives in the arson attack, which was attributed to the murder of Azin Nesin, the Turkish translator of the novel.
In the years that followed, the cowardice of democratic leaders has only expanded the space that legitimizes the destructive methods used by religious supremacists. The radicals have been allowed to disguise themselves as ‘community leaders’. For example, Iqbal Sakrani once said that “death is, perhaps, a little too easy” for Rushdie. Years later, he received a knighthood from the British government for “services to the community”.
When Rushdie was knighted, violent protests broke out in the Muslim world. The late Shirley Williams, a Liberal Democrat member of the British House of Lords, called it a ‘mistake’: “This is a man who has angered Muslims in a very powerful way, who has been shielded from threats by the British police. Great cost to the taxpayer. But suicide for years and years, and frankly, I think it was not wise, and not really clever, to give him a knighthood.”
Rushdie’s transformation from the late 1990s into an establishment figure and a tyrannical Indian uncle – he discarded the usual and often inaccurate insights on world affairs, filled with malice, ridiculed others, he said “of quality Defense”, as he counted himself among the greats of history. The authors, and, with the unconsciousness created by Tawi Hasti, offered mitigation for Iraq War advocates, while the incomparably exaggerated VS. , But now is not the time for that.
Now is the time to congratulate Rushdie at home and acknowledge that for all his successes he is a sad man. The Satanic Verses It is one of those books that are not so read accumulated by the culture in the imaginations of the people. And the author of the book is known in most developing countries not as a novelist, but as a vaguely sinister figure. Consider international guerrilla, A hugely successful Pakistani film released in 1990, in which he is portrayed as a corrupt agent of Jews and Hindus trying to destroy Islam. He is so ‘devil’ that nothing comes of a jihadi mission to kill him. Ultimately, Rushdie is sent down from the sky by a laser fired by a packet of Quran flying. When the British refused to certify the film, Rushdie personally intervened to get it approved.
There are many Indian ‘seculars’ and Western ‘liberals’ who only marginally hate Rushdie, the creator of Rushdie. international guerrilla, Peas took up arms against Rushdie. There are still many of us who believe that if Rushdie didn’t deserve it, he took it upon himself.
Kapil Komireddy is the author of Malevolent Republic: A Short History of the New India., Thoughts are personal.
(Edited by Likes)