Satanic(s) V/s Rushdie

The Jaipur Literary Fest is one of the most eagerly awaited event where writers, emerging poets and philosophers congregate to educate, enlighten and entertain the motley gathering by sharing their precious literary work. It is a wonderful gathering of intellectuals who try to immerse themselves in a time-zone, albeit for a small time keeping aside their worldly desires and aspirations.
Salman Rushdie the ‘’controversial’’- (for the people who haven’t read his book or understood the contents) author of ‘’The Satanic Verses’’ was invited to attend the Jaipur festival . The organizers of the event thought that the presence of the Booker prize winning author would attract enough luminaries and spell success for the event that is already growing popular by the day.
Invitations were sent to the author and once the media highlighted his, would be presence all hell broke loose. The satans came out in hordes I mean the illiterate and extremist maulvis & mullas who dared Rushdie to come to India threatening to disrupt the fest in the event of him making it to the venue. The fanatical and banned SIMI went ahead and announced an award of Rs. one lac to whom so ever could fling his footwear at the author and succeed in hitting the target. Sinister Plans were also hatched to liquidate the author in connivance with the Underworld though the Police later rejected this claim as baseless and a hoax.
The ensuing State elections and fear of losing the minority Vote made the Central Govt. jittery who forced the organizers to drop Rushdie from the on-going fest.
Four of the assembled Indian authors viz. Jeet Thayil ,Ruchir Joshi ,Hari Kunzru & Amitava kumar expressed their solidarity with Rushdie by openly reading excerpts from the book- Satanic Verses.
Ironically, the Police immediately swung into action by registering complaints against the foursome while the zealots and the communal Satan’s got away scot free. The appeasement factor once again made its ugly presence felt.

Writers and controversies accompany each other. Sometimes the controversy is created to ‘sell’ a Book or induce curiosity about the contents which can pave way to be classified later on as a BEST-SELLER.
The Satanic Verses consists of pages which are a figment of imagination of the writer and is purely non-fiction. Any written piece be it some novel or passage or some damn blog captures the mood or pours out the pent up feelings stashed in the mind of the writer and it is entirely up to the reader to accept or reject the contents in toto. The writer takes the onus for what is written and if the contents are not good enough the scripture will die a natural death with the former becoming extinct faster than a dinosaur. Books and articles which are well written leave a lasting impact on the readers, increases their knowledge and gives them an opportunity of verifying the difference between myths and facts which are often juxtaposed in one another.

The funniest part is none of the fanatics/opponents have read the book and I am quite sure that almost the entire lot would have to go through a lot of pain and herculean efforts just to decipher what has been written in the banned book that too in a language alien to them.

India has always projected itself as a SOFT State courtesy its Spineless leaders by repeatedly banning books, plays and films on the grounds of enticing and spreading communal disharmony. Banning lures or entices people into wanting to see behind the veil. It will encourage people to smuggle such books/CDs and even read/Watch them in solitude on the internet. It can popularize certain books/films which are really not worth but ride the WAVE to populism because of the artificial and surreal interest /hype generated.