Bullies and their certainties
By Juan Gabriel Vásquez; translated by Jeremy Osner.
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After Salman Rushdie cancelled his trip to the Jaipur Literary Festival due to apparent death threats, a writer named Hari Kunzru downloaded passages of Rushdie’s novel The Satanic Verses, which is banned in India, and read them in public at the festival. While many disagreed with his actions, he did something important: he kept the bigots from winning.
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In the Indian state of Rajasthan, the Jaipur literary festival is happening this week. It started out in 2006 with a few hundred attendees; currently 20,000 visitors come each day on the weekend. But this year the big news was not these impressive statistics, but rather something that is not ordinarily news during a literary festival: an author read selections from a novel. (True, the novel was not his own, and he read it with admiration. One author admiring another, proclaiming this admiration publicly, well yes, that’s news.) The reader was Hari Kunzru, the great Anglo-Indian, or Indo-British, novelist; the novel was The Satanic Verses, by Salman Rushdie. And you’ll be asking — Why is this news, this reading aloud of Rushdie’s novel? I’ll tell you: Because The Satanic Verses is banned in India. If one is going to be reading from a banned novel, most likely one will be carrying a copy. If one is carrying a copy of a banned novel, one runs the risk of ending up in jail.
The Satanic Verses, aside from being a great novel, is well known for having led the Ayatollah Khomeini to sentence Rushdie to death, by the pronunciation of a fatwa in 1988. Rushdie was forced, from that time on, to live an underground life, surrounded by bodyguards, not trusting anyone, astonished to see intellectuals saying that the fatwa was in some sense justified, that he “got what he was asking for,” that “one must respect religious beliefs.” For the past few years Rushdie has, at last, been able to appear in public again, to lead a normal life; but recently in Barcelona, when I had the pleasure of introducing him at the launch of the Spanish translation of one of his latest novels, I came to understand that there is nothing normal about the life he leads. When we got to the bookstore where the launch was taking place, armored cars full of police were waiting for us along with a riot squad; when the event was over, Rushdie could not sign books, by express order of the security staff. One never knows who could be in the crowd. But be that as it may, Rushdie was close to believing that this 20-year nightmare was over. Then it was announced that he would be speaking at Jaipur. This announcement was followed by protests from various Islamist organizations; and one fine day came word that Rushdie had cancelled the visit. Why? He believed that three assassins were on their way from Bombay with orders to kill him.
It now appears that this information was false. But the risk was sufficiently great that Rushdie, in an act of responsibility (not to mention self-preservation), cancelled his visit. This was what led Kunzru — and not only him — to download passages from The Satanic Verses, and read them at the festival: it was a way of keeping the victory from those who do not speak, but rather scream; those who do not discuss, but rather threaten. In Great Britain, many people whom I respect believe that Kunzru erred, that his actions only inflamed the situation. I disagree: it took courage to do what Kunzru did, and I believe that he achieved something important. He kept the bigots from winning, those who would silence one whose only crime is to question established doctrine; those who have only certainties, and wish to kill anyone who does not share their certainties.
