Odisha News, Odisha Latest news, Odisha Daily - OrissaPOST
  • Home
  • Trending
  • State
  • Metro
  • National
  • International
  • Business
  • Feature
  • Entertainment
  • Sports
  • More..
    • Odisha Special
    • Editorial
    • Opinion
    • Careers
    • Sci-Tech
    • Timeout
    • Horoscope
    • Today’s Pic
  • Video
  • Epaper
  • News in Odia
  • Home
  • Trending
  • State
  • Metro
  • National
  • International
  • Business
  • Feature
  • Entertainment
  • Sports
  • More..
    • Odisha Special
    • Editorial
    • Opinion
    • Careers
    • Sci-Tech
    • Timeout
    • Horoscope
    • Today’s Pic
  • Video
  • Epaper
  • News in Odia
No Result
View All Result
OrissaPOST - Odisha Latest news, English Daily -
No Result
View All Result

‘I don’t want to hide’ says Rushdie, 30 years after fatwa

Updated: February 11th, 2019, 12:23 IST
in International
0
British Indian novelist, essayist Salman Rushdie insists that he now lives a normal life, though his best-known work "The Satanic Verses" triggered death threats (AFP)

British Indian novelist, essayist Salman Rushdie insists that he now lives a normal life, though his best-known work "The Satanic Verses" triggered death threats (AFP)

Share on FacebookShare on TwitterShare on WhatsAppShare on Linkedin

Paris: After decades spent in the shadow of a death sentence pronounced by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Salman Rushdie is quietly defiant.

“I don’t want to live hidden away,” he told AFP during a visit here.

Also Read

Microsoft AI

Microsoft winds up Pakistan office after 25 years of presence

8 hours ago
Pic- IANS

China imposes anti-dumping duties on European brandy as trade tensions rise

11 hours ago

The novelist’s life changed forever February 14, 1989, when Iran’s spiritual leader ordered Rushdie’s execution after branding his novel “The Satanic Verses” blasphemous.

Like a kind of reverse Valentine, Tehran renewed the fatwa year after year.

Rushdie, who some say is the greatest writer India has produced since Tagore, spent 13 years living under a false name and constant police protection.

“I was 41 back then, now I am 71. Things are fine now,” he said in September.

“We live in a world where the subject changes very fast. And this is a very old subject. There are now many other things to be frightened about — and other people to kill,” he added ruefully.

Rushdie stopped using an assumed name in the months after September 11 2001, three years after Tehran had said the threat against him was “over”.

But armed plainclothes police nonetheless sat outside the door of his French publisher’s office in Paris during an interview with AFP. Several others had taken up positions in the courtyard.

Earlier, Rushdie had assured a sceptical audience at a book festival in eastern France that he led a “completely normal life” in New York, where he has lived for nearly two decades.

“I take the subway,” he said.

Unexpected controversy

“The Satanic Verses” was Rushdie’s fifth book, he has now written his 18th. Titled “The Golden House” it is about a man from Mumbai, who much like the author, reinvents himself in the Big Apple in a bid to shake off his past.

The dark years of riots, bomb plots and the murder of one of the book’s translators and the shooting and stabbing of two others now “feels like a very long time ago,” he said.

“Islam was not a thing. No one was thinking in that way,” he explained of the period when “The Satanic Verses” was written.

“One of the things that has happened is that people in the West are more informed than they used to be,” he added.

In 1998, almost a decade after Ayatollah Khomeini (poster, top right) declared a fatwa against Salman Rushdi, Iranians still called for his death Iranian women from the Iranian Islamic Militia (Bassidji) hold posters of Iran’s late paramount leader Ayatollah Khomeini and his successor Ayatollah Ali Khamenei during a demonstration in Tehran 13 October.

Thousands of people gathered to demand the application of the fatwa (religious decree) calling for the death of Salman Rushdie. Iranian women from the Iranian Islamic Militia (Bassidji) hold posters of Iran’s late paramount leader Ayatollah Khomeini and his successor Ayatollah Ali Khamenei during a demonstration in Tehran 13 October. Thousands of people gathered to demand the application of the fatwa (religious decree) calling for the death of Salman Rushdie.

Even so, the book was greatly misunderstood, he insisted: “Really it’s a novel about South Asian immigrants in London.”

Rushdie’s friend, the British Pakistani writer Hanif Kureishi, reckons no one “would have the balls today to write ‘The Satanic Verses’, let alone publish it.”

But even Kureishi, who wrote an acclaimed novel “The Black Album” in its aftermath about young British Muslims radicalising themselves, admitted that he never saw the controversy coming when he read a proof copy.

He mused: “I didn’t notice anything about it that might rouse the fundamentalists. I saw it as a book about psychosis, about newness and change.”

‘Competitive intolerance’

Yet the fury it generated was a milestone in the rise of political Islam.

Indian author and journalist Salil Tripathi of PEN International, which campaigns for writers’ rights, said he hoped major publishers would still be brave enough to publish “The Satanic Verses”.

“I have not totally lost hope, but undoubtedly the Rushdie case has created a mental brake. A lot of subjects are now seen as taboo,” he conceded.

“In India with Hindu nationalism, people are very wary about saying things about Hindu gods and goddesses because you don’t know what might happen to you. The threat of the mob has grown phenomenally,” Tripathi added.

Today, intimidation is carried out by foot soldiers rather than declared by governments, he said, suggesting that now all religious clerics have to do to rouse the angry masses is to voice their dislike for a publication.

Salil Tripathi of PEN International believes that since the Rushdie affair, threats against writers have “grown phenomenally”

He warned: “This is a frightening reality check for writers. There is competitive intolerance going on — ‘If Muslims can get the cartoons banned in Denmark, why can’t we in Pakistan or India ban this Christian or Hindu writer from saying this or that?'”

Sean Gallagher, of the London-based Index on Censorship, said the world has not moved on much since the Rushdie affair.

“The issues we deal with now are the same. The debate over blasphemy laws is part of a cyclical conversation that is pretty necessary. It’s important we continue to be vigilant about freedom of expression and have these cultural dialogues,” he explained.

Rushdie himself is equally philosophical. Asked if he should have written the book, he replied, “I take the Edith Piaf position: Je ne regrette rien (I regret nothing),” quoting the French singer’s famous anthem of battered defiance.

AFP

Tags: FatwaSalman RushdieThe Satanic Verses
Share4TweetSendShare
Suggest A Correction

Enter your email to get our daily news in your inbox.

 

OrissaPOST epaper Sunday POST OrissaPOST epaper

Click Here: Plastic Free Odisha

#MyPaperBagChallenge

Priyasha Pradhan

December 12, 2019
#MyPaperBagChallenge

Adrita Bhattacharya

December 12, 2019
#MyPaperBagChallenge

Archit Mohapatra

December 12, 2019
#MyPaperBagChallenge

Narendra Kumar

December 12, 2019
#MyPaperBagChallenge

Arya Ayushman

December 12, 2019
#MyPaperBagChallenge

Mrutyunjaya Behera

December 12, 2019
#MyPaperBagChallenge

Ipsita

December 12, 2019
#MyPaperBagChallenge

Anup Mahapatra

December 12, 2019
#MyPaperBagChallenge

Archana Parida

December 12, 2019
#MyPaperBagChallenge

Anasuya Sahoo

December 12, 2019
#MyPaperBagChallenge

Sibarama Khotei

December 12, 2019
#MyPaperBagChallenge

Adweeti Bhattacharya

December 12, 2019
#MyPaperBagChallenge

Tapaswini Mallick

December 12, 2019
#MyPaperBagChallenge

Sipra Mishra

December 12, 2019
#MyPaperBagChallenge

Spinoj Pattnaik

December 12, 2019
#MyPaperBagChallenge

Sarmistha Nayak

December 12, 2019
#MyPaperBagChallenge

Akshaya Kumar Dash

December 12, 2019
#MyPaperBagChallenge

Pratyasharani Ghibela

December 12, 2019
#MyPaperBagChallenge

Pratik Kumar Ghibela

December 12, 2019
#MyPaperBagChallenge

Lopali Pattnaik

December 12, 2019
#MyPaperBagChallenge

Matrumangal Jena

December 12, 2019
#MyPaperBagChallenge

Rajashree Pravati Mohanty

December 12, 2019
#MyPaperBagChallenge

Pratik Kumar

December 12, 2019
?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
#MyPaperBagChallenge

Dibya Ranjan Das

December 12, 2019
#MyPaperBagChallenge

Ankita Balabantray

December 12, 2019
#MyPaperBagChallenge

Pitabas Tripathy

December 12, 2019
#MyPaperBagChallenge

Akriti Negi

December 12, 2019
#MyPaperBagChallenge

Ramakanta Sahoo

December 12, 2019
#MyPaperBagChallenge

Mandakini Dakua

December 12, 2019
#MyPaperBagChallenge

Swarit Praharaj

December 12, 2019

Archives

Editorial

Hungary Lessons

Hungary
July 2, 2025

Revolting against oppression and seeking freedom is ingrained in human nature, something that a repressive regime finds out sooner or...

Read more

New Democratic Face

Zohran Mamdani
July 1, 2025

US President Donald Trump, who had comfortably defeated his Democratic rival Kamala Harris in the recent presidential election and exuded...

Read more

Proof To Vote

Vote
June 30, 2025

Months ahead of the Assembly polls in Bihar, the Election Commission of India (ECI) on 28 June launched a ‘special...

Read more

Genesis of Jana Sangh

AAKAR PATEL
June 29, 2025

We marked the 50th anniversary of the Emergency a few days ago. Another anniversary, this time the 75th, went relatively...

Read more
  • Home
  • State
  • Metro
  • National
  • International
  • Business
  • Editorial
  • Opinion
  • Sports
  • About Us
  • Advertise
  • Contact Us
  • Jobs
Developed By Ratna Technology

© 2024 All rights Reserved by OrissaPOST

  • News in Odia
  • Orissa POST Epaper
  • Video
  • Home
  • Trending
  • Metro
  • State
  • Odisha Special
  • National
  • International
  • Sports
  • Business
  • Editorial
  • Entertainment
  • Horoscope
  • Careers
  • Feature
  • Today’s Pic
  • Opinion
  • Sci-Tech
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Jobs

© 2024 All rights Reserved by OrissaPOST

    • News in Odia
    • Orissa POST Epaper
    • Video
    • Home
    • Trending
    • Metro
    • State
    • Odisha Special
    • National
    • International
    • Sports
    • Business
    • Editorial
    • Entertainment
    • Horoscope
    • Careers
    • Feature
    • Today’s Pic
    • Opinion
    • Sci-Tech
    • About Us
    • Contact Us
    • Jobs

    © 2024 All rights Reserved by OrissaPOST