Revisiting the Satanic Panic – La Tribune

Imagine this scenario: Upon its publication in 1988, Salman Rushdie’s Booker-shortlisted “The Satanic Verses” was widely available in Indian bookstores. It reached the bestseller lists, sparking a provocative debate. While some critics vehemently criticize its depiction of Islamic figures, it is praised for its exploration of identity, migration and religion. Rushdie continued to lead a celebrated literary life in London, with subsequent works becoming increasingly daring and further challenging the status quo.

Instead, of course, a notorious fatwa was issued. The author spent decades in hiding, separated from family and friends, while writing remarkable works. In 2022, he was violently attacked and had to spend weeks recovering, losing an eye and partial use of a hand.

Let us never believe that the way people in power tell us to look at the world is the only way we can look. Salman Rushdie

To think that this all goes back to a single notification dated October 5, 1988 banning the importation of the book under the Indian Customs Act – but where is this document today? Nobody knows. In response to a query, the Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs recently informed the Delhi High Court that she was untraceable. Court response: the ban on the importation of “Satanic Verses” must be presumed to be non-existent.

India was the first country to ban the novel, and there is a case to be made that if it had not done so, the satanic panic would not have reached its peak. It is a cruel twist of fate that the document which made the author a cause celebre has disappeared. Martin Amis once wrote that Rushdie had “disappeared within the first pages”, and it appears the notification followed suit.

The “match that lit the fire,” as Rushdie put it in his memoir “Joseph Anton,” was the publication of an excerpt, an interview and a review by Madhu Jain in India Today, nine days before the publication of the book. “The Satanic Verses,” Jain writes, is “an uncompromising and unequivocal attack on religious fanaticism and fundamentalism, which in this book are largely Islamic.” His last premonitory sentence: “The Satanic Verses will not fail to trigger an avalanche of protests from the ramparts. »

Rushdie himself appears to have been initially surprised. In an interview with Sunday magazine on September 18, 1988, Shrabani Basu asked him about the possibility of it not being published in India. His response: “That’s news to me – I haven’t heard of it from Penguin. But it would be absurd to think that a book could provoke riots. It’s a strange view of the world.

Among those who had a different view was Syed Shahabuddin, then a Janata Party MP. Writing in the Times of India, he demanded that the government immediately ban the book. At the time, he hadn’t read it: “I don’t need to dig through a dirty sewer to know what dirt is.” »

Khushwant Singh, then editorial advisor for Penguin India, also raised concerns. As Kenan Malik recounts in “From Fatwa to Jihad,” Singh “was convinced that this would cause a lot of problems.” Meanwhile, Rajiv Gandhi’s government took matters into its own hands and announced its version of a ban by making the importation of the book illegal. This notification, as the Delhi High Court said, is now nowhere to be found.

Thirty-six years later, will “The Satanic Verses” finally be available in India? The court’s decision opened “a potential avenue”, according to lawyer Uddyam Mukherjee, speaking to AP.

Chiki Sarkar, formerly at Penguin India and now head of Juggernaut Books, points out that “these are questions that the Penguin Random House team will have with their lawyers.” She adds that in principle, “I don’t think that banning a book brings anything to our times, and I’m not even sure that banning is really feasible.”

While we await further clarity, it is worth recalling the words spoken by Rushdie in an interview broadcast on Channel 4 on February 14, 1989, the day the fatwa was announced. “Let us never believe,” he said, “that the way people in power tell us to look at the world is the only way we can look at the world, because if we do, then it is a a terrible sort of self-censorship.

— Sanjay Sipahimalani is a writer and critic based in Mumbai