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Posted by Free Word on 24/1/12

Controversy surrounding the 1988 novel The Satanic Verses has reignited after its author Salman Rushdie cancelled his appearance at the Jaipur Literature Festival. Rushdie pulled out of a scheduled appearance following apparent threats of assassination (reported subsequently to be fictitious). In response to his absence British Indian author Hari Kunzru and three other writers, Jeet Thayil, Ruchir Joshi and Amitava Kumar, decided to read out from The Satanic Verses on the Festival's opening day. After further protests by some of India's Muslim community, a planned public video-link with Rushdie has also now been cancelled.

In his address to the Festival, Kunzru declared, 'There are many rights for which we should fight, but the right to protection from offense is not one of them. Freedom of speech is a foundational freedom, on which all others depend. Freedom of speech means the freedom to say unpopular, even shocking things. Without it, writers can have little impact on the culture. Unless we come out strongly in support of Rushdie’s right to be here, and to speak to us, we might as well shut the doors of this hall and go home.'

Writing in Guernica Magazine and The Guardian on Sunday, he added, 'Our intention was not to offend anyone’s religious sensibilities, but to give a voice to a writer who had been silenced by a death threat. Reading from another one of his books would have been meaningless. The Satanic Verses was the cause of the trouble, so The Satanic Verses it would have to be. We did not choose passages which have been construed as blasphemous by Muslim opponents of the book—this would have been pointless, as these passages have overshadowed the rest of the content of the novel, which concerns the relationship between faith and doubt, and contains much that has nothing to do with religion whatsoever. We wanted to demystify the book. It is, after all, just a book. Not a bomb. Not a knife or a gun. Just a book.'

In an interview with the Times of India, poet, writer and musician Thayil brushed off the threats of legal action and violence, saying, 'I'm back in Delhi and it's business as usual. It's just another day in a writer's life.'

Sign a petition to the Indian Prime Minister to revoke the ban on The Satanic Verses.

Read Index on Censorship's coverage of the controversy.

Follow Hari Kunzru on Twitter. Hari is appearing at The Literary Conference at the Free Word Centre on 8th June.