How many years to correct the mistake, Rushdie asks about book ban

Hours after former finance minister P Chidambaram described the ban on Salman Rushdie’s book “Satanic Verses” in India as wrong, the author asked how many more years it would take to correct the “mistake”.

Hours after former finance minister P Chidambaram described the ban on Salman Rushdie’s book “The Satanic Verses” in India as wrong, the author asked how many more years it would take to correct the “mistake”.

Noted author Salman Rushdie has asked how long it would take to correct the Indian government’s “mistake” of banning his infamous novel, The Satanic Verses. (HT Photo)

Rushdie’s remarks was prompted by Chidambaram’s admission on Saturday that the Rajiv Gandhi government’s decision to ban the controversial novel was a mistake.

Chidambaram, who was minister of state home affairs when the ban was imposed in October 1988, had said at the Delhi Times LitFest on Friday that he had “no hesitation in saying that the ban on Salman Rushdie’s book was wrong.”

Rushdie took to Twitter to say, “This admission just took 27 years. How many before the ‘mistake’ is corrected?”

The publication of the “Satanic Verses” in 1988 was followed by a fatwa by Iran’s religious leader Ayatollah Khomenini calling for Rushdie to be killed, forcing the author to go into hiding.

Earlier in 2012, the author had to pull out from the Jaipur Literature Festival citing threats by some Muslim groups and had to even cancel a subsequent video address in the same festival.