Revisiting the Satanic panic

Imagine this scenario: upon publication in 1988, Salman Rushdie’s Booker-shortlisted ‘The Satanic Verses’ is widely available across Indian bookstores. It reaches the bestseller lists, sparking a provocative debate. While some critics vehemently decry its portrayal of Islamic figures, it is hailed for its exploration of identity, migration and religion. Rushdie continues to lead a celebrated literary life in London, with subsequent works that grow more audacious and further challenge the status quo.

Instead, of course, a notorious fatwa was issued. The author spent decades in hiding, estranged from family and friends, but still writing works of note. In 2022, he was viciously attacked and had to spend weeks in recovery, losing an eye and the partial use of one hand.

Let us never believe that the way in which the people in power tell us to look at the world is the only way we can look. Salman Rushdie

To think that all this can be traced back to a single notification dated October 5, 1988, banning the import of the book under the Indian Customs Act — but where is this document today? No one knows. Replying to a petition, the Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs recently informed the Delhi High Court that it cannot be found. The court’s reported response: the import ban on ‘The Satanic Verses’ must be presumed non-existent.

India was the first country to proscribe the novel, and there is a case to be made that had it not done so, the Satanic panic wouldn’t have reached fever pitch. It’s a cruel twist of fate that the document which turned the author into a cause celebre has vanished. Martin Amis once wrote that Rushdie had “disappeared into the front pages”, and it looks like the notification has followed suit.

The “match that lit the fire”, as Rushdie put it in his memoir, ‘Joseph Anton’, was the publication of an extract, interview, and review by Madhu Jain in India Today, nine days before the book’s publication. ‘The Satanic Verses’, wrote Jain, is “an uncompromising, unequivocal attack on religious fanaticism and fundamentalism, which in this book is largely Islamic”. Her prescient final line: “‘The Satanic Verses’ is bound to trigger an avalanche of protests from the ramparts.”

Rushdie himself seems to have been initially surprised. In an interview with Sunday magazine on September 18, 1988, Shrabani Basu asked him about the possibility that it may not be published in India. His reply: “That’s news to me — I haven’t heard it from Penguin. But it would be absurd to think that a book can cause riots. That’s a strange sort of view of the world.”

Among those who took a different view was the then Janata Party MP, Syed Shahabuddin. Writing in The Times of India, he demanded that the government ban the book at once. At the time, he hadn’t read it: “I do not have to wade through a filthy drain to know what filth is.”

Khushwant Singh, then editorial adviser for Penguin India, also raised concerns. As Kenan Malik recounts in ‘From Fatwa to Jihad’, Singh “was positive it would cause a lot of trouble”. Meanwhile, the Rajiv Gandhi government took matters into its own hands and announced its version of a ban by making it illegal to import the book. This notification, as the Delhi High Court was told, is now untraceable.

Thirty-six years later, will ‘The Satanic Verses’ finally be available in India? The court ruling has opened “a potential path”, according to lawyer Uddyam Mukherjee, speaking to AP.

Chiki Sarkar, formerly with Penguin India and now heading Juggernaut Books, points out that “these are questions the Penguin Random House team will have with their lawyers”. She adds that in principle, “I don’t think banning a book achieves anything in today’s age, and I’m not sure banning is even really practicable”.

Until there’s further clarity, it’s worth recalling Rushdie’s words from a Channel 4 interview broadcast on February 14, 1989, the day the fatwa was announced. “Let us never believe,” he said, “that the way in which the people in power tell us to look at the world is the only way we can look, because if we do that, then that’s a kind of appalling self-censorship.”

— Sanjay Sipahimalani is a Mumbai-based writer and reviewer