We’re past the past: Salman Rushdie episode- Rajdeep Sardesai

Is 2011-12, 1988-89 all over again? The near farce over Salman Rushdie’s non-appearance in Jaipur, whether in person or even in a videolink, would suggest so. Rewind to the late 1980s. A beleaguered Rajiv Gandhi government, its image dented by the Bofors kickback accusations, chooses to ban Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses. India, in fact, had the ‘distinction’ of becoming the first country in the world to ban the book, perhaps before anyone in the country had even read it.

Worse, on February 24, 1989, barely 10 days after the infamous fatwa delivered against Rushdie by Ayatollah Khomeini, 12 people were killed in police firing in Bombay. The police claimed it was forced to open fire when a crowd of around 10,000 Muslims protesting outside the British Consulate began to turn violent.

It was also the year of the horrific Bhagalpur riots when more than 1,000 people were killed. The riots were part of a decade of violence with strong communal and sectarian overtones culminating in the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992. It was also a period when the Congress government at the Centre pussyfooted on a variety of sensitive inter-community issues, from the Shah Bano case to opening the locks of the disputed shrine in Ayodhya.

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