At a bookstore in the New Delhi suburb of Gurgaon, Neha Sharma has picked up a brand new copy of Salman Rushdie’s “The Satanic Verses” – finally.
“One time, my relative was about to visit from the US and I almost considered asking her bringing this,” she said, holding up the Booker Prize-winning novel. “But I got scared at the last minute – what if they stopped her at the airport?”
India was the first country to ban “The Satanic Verses” in 1988, the year it was published, due to concerns that some Muslims could find parts of the novel blasphemous.
In a New York courtroom on Tuesday, Rushdie faced his attacker, Hadi Matar, for the first time since the 26-year-old US-Lebanese national stabbed the celebrated author on August 12, 2022.
Read more‘Satanic Verses’ author Rushdie says stabbing left him in a ‘lake of blood’
In his testimonies, Matar has said Rushdie attacked Islam but the suspect has not referred to “The Satanic Verses” and is not believed to have read the book.
Rushdie’s most powerful critical, the late Ayatollah Khomenei, had also not read the novel back in 1989 when he issued a fatwa calling for the Indian-born author’s death on February 14.
Khomeini was Iran’s supreme leader at that time and his fatwa forced Rushdie into hiding for decades.
By then, “The Satanic Verses” was already unavailable in India since Indian customs officials issued an import ban on the book in October 1988.
The import ban was finally overturned last year – not due to freedom of speech concerns but a bureaucratic mishap that stunned lawyers.
When a petitioner filed a freedom of information case at a New Delhi court, Indian government officials discovered the ban notification order was lost. The court then declared it had no option but to “presume” that no such ban notification exists.
“The reason why the book was banned in the first place was not very clear, and we approached the court primarily seeking a quashing of this notification. I really hadn’t expected that the notification wouldn’t come out, till the last day when the matter was decided,” explained Indian Supreme Court advocate Uddyam Mukherjee.
The book does not have an Indian publisher and no publisher has yet committed to print the book in India, but booksellers are hopeful that a lower price than the current €22 will draw more Indian readers to Rushdie’s iconic work.
As copies of “The Satanic Verses” finally filled up Indian bookstands, shopper Shanta Sharan said she was happy to finally get the chance to read the novel. “Rushdie became a taboo in a certain section of the community, and the other the section’s interest was very peaked. It’s time we picked it up and we see his point of view.”
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