June
29, 2007
Knighthood for Salman Rushdie
Salman Rushdie,
60, author of the blasphemous novel “The Satanic
Verses” is back once more in the media limelight
having been honored by a knighthood by the British
crown. Muslim countries, Iran and Pakistan in particular,
have condemned the award. Much more violent protests,
claiming some 20 lives, were held in 1988 when his
offensive novel was published. In February 1989,
shortly after the publication, the supreme leader
of Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, issued a Fatwa
(edict) imposing death sentence on him. A 2.5 million
dollar award was also announced for his head by
a private foundation of Iran.
The Indian-born, Cambridge-educated, British national
who lives now in New York, was provided protection
by British authorities till the moderate leader,
Mohammad Khatami, became the President of Iran and,
in a bid to cultivate the West, decided to distance
his country from the Ayatollah’s edict. His
Foreign Minister declared: “The government
of the Islamic Republic of Iran has no intention,
nor it is going to take any action.”
It is perhaps relevant to mention here that it was
Mike Kaufman, South Asia correspondent of NY Times
stationed in New Delhi, who on a visit to Islamabad
in 1981, persuaded me to read Rushdie’s novel
“Midnight’s Children” which Kaufman
ranked equal in quality to Tolstoy’s “War
and Peace”. I got a copy post haste from London
and found myself entangled in a web of bizarre tales,
weird imagery and jarring fantasies if not hallucinations.
It is a sprawling account of events leading to India’s
independence and what happened in the subcontinent
in the following 30 years. Its linear narrative
spans several generations compounding the confusion.
The reviews on the book appearing in the Western
press were so laudatory that I started convincing
myself of the inadequacy of my own comprehension
of modern or post-modern literature and its peculiar
forms and facets. Midnight’s Children struck
me like a painting in abstract art which I could
never understand and appreciate even if I were to
stand upside down on my head.
Rushdie had written a novel ”Grimus”
before this book but it had made absolutely no mark
on the literary scene. I couldn’t avoid the
impression that this Muslim-Indian maverick, educated
and settled in England, was being built up tendentiously
by a section of the Western media. The book was
awarded England’s prestigious Booker Prize
as the best novel of 1981. This award carried a
purse of sixty thousand pounds. Translation of the
work followed in various languages. Rushdie must
have got another harvest of rewards. He found himself
in the company of world famous novelists of modern
times.
In less than two years, his next novel “Shame”
was published. Out of sheer curiosity, I secured
a copy of it from London and was surprised to find
that this time the target of his ridicule and satire
was not the subcontinent, but only Pakistan.
He wrote: “The country in this story is not
Pakistan, or not quite. There are two countries,
real and fictional, occupying the same space, or
almost the same space. My story, my fictional country
exist, like myself at a slight angle to reality.
I have found this off-centering to be necessary;
but its value is, of course open to debate. My view
is that I am not writing only about Pakistan.”
In point of fact, the entire novel is based on Pakistan
and presents heavily refracted images of the society.
Rushdie appears bent on seeing only the seamy side
of things and projecting them through his colored
and crooked glasses. Our leaders, past and present,
enter the narrative in the form of different mean,
obnoxious characters without an iota of shame despite
their thoughts and acts evoking all the time nothing
but shame. So much of space has been allotted to
a character resembling the then President, Gen.
Zia.
Although it was not within the purview of my official
assignment at that time, I thought it advisable
to recommend that it would not be in national interest
to ban it as that would invite further attention
to an unflattering book and incite people to secure
and read it. Fortunately, this point of view was
accepted and the book went virtually unnoticed in
the country.
The efforts to build up Rushdie continued on the
other hand. The book was considered as deserving
of the Booker award, but was not given the prize
since the author had already received an award for
his earlier work. The book was, nevertheless, granted
a French award. The New York Times book review placed
Rushdie at par with Swift, Voltaire and Sterne.
The time had come for him to launch his magnum opus:
The Satanic Verses. It was hailed as a “masterpiece”;
“a roller coaster ride over a vast landscape
of the imagination”; “a truly original
novel”, “exhilarating” and “hilarious”
work of art. Rushdie received the Whitbread Prize
for the best novel of 1988.
In many parts of the world, particularly in Muslim
countries the book was banned declaring it blasphemous.
Demonstrations against the book were held in many
parts of Pakistan. Several lives were lost in Islamabad
when the police opened fire to disperse a vast,
unruly crowd which had collected at the American
Center and was threatening to sack it.
Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwa of 1989
sent Rushdie hiding behind the protective shield
of British secret service. But, the evil spell of
the book continued. A translator was killed here,
a publisher there. The killings were attributed
by the media to Islamic fanatics, and the image
of the Muslims at large continued to be tarnished
in the process.
As the book stood banned, I could get a copy only
in 1991 in an Anaheim library. Amusingly enough,
it is still listed under Science Fiction, while
his other works are correctly placed under the general
category of Fiction. I had developed a mental reservation
about the book chiefly because it had claimed the
lives of so many innocent, yet emotionally charged
and over-zealous people. And, it had led to the
tarnishing of the image of the followers of a great
religion as fanatics. I returned the book to the
library after reading the first two chapters which
I found quite offensive. A couple of years later,
I borrowed the book again but this time too I could
not go through more than half of the book. In the
third attempt I read bits and pieces of the second
half.
The Western media campaign in favor of Rushdie and
his book continued. Iran was declared the worst
offender in the US State Department’s annual
reports on world terrorism for both 1996 and 1997.
Rushdie was afforded an opportunity to meet President
Bill Clinton -an honor conferred not even on winners
of the Nobel Prize for literature.
A year after Imam Khomeini’s edict, Rushdie
published his novel “Haroun and the Sea of
Stories”. In this book too, he maintains his
dastan format of the narrative. The main
theme is that Rushdie has a sea of stories to tell
but is confined to a land of silence, perhaps a
reference to the edict. His son tries to rescue
him from that land. This book makes piquant reading
unlike his earlier works.
The evil spell of his “Satanic Verses”
continues to this day. But it has brought a financial
boon and an eminent place for him among the modern
world literati. The initial payment he had received
for The Satanic Verses is reported to be $800,000.
Royalties and payments for translations must have
brought several million more, apart from the fame,
or notoriety, and the status particularly in the
Western world. The grant of a knighthood now crowns
the other awards and material gains. Perhaps in
his scale of values the betrayal of his religion,
his community’s beliefs and traditions and
his conscience was a small price to pay for the
enormous rewards that have come his way.
arifhussaini@hotmail.com
