Salman Rushdie Saturday night accused India’s government and some of its political leaders of cowardice over their failure to defend his and other artists’ freedom of expression in the face of protests by what he termed Muslim and Hindu extremists.
He also launched a withering attack on Imran Khan, the former Pakistan cricket captain-turned-politician who withdrew from a conference in New Delhi in protest at Salman’s appearance at the same event.
He said Imran Khan had lived a ‘playboy’ life as a young man, but had now “struck deals with the army and the Mullahs” in his quest for power in Pakistan. He was a “dictator in waiting”, he said.
Rushdie was speaking at a conclave of opinion formers organised by the leading Indian magazine group India Today, two months after he was forced to withdraw from the Jaipur Literature Festival following threats and protests from Muslims over his 1988 novel The Satanic Verses. He backed out after police and government officials warned him an assassination team had been dispatched to kill him.
Rushdie said India was in danger of losing essential freedoms because its leaders are not prepared to defend them. Some of India’s most senior government leaders, including the finance minister Pranab Mukherjee, and two of the country’s youngest chief ministers, Omar Abdullah of Jammu and Kashmir and Akhilesh Yadav of Uttar Pradesh, also pulled out of the conference. “They’re running away when no-one says boo. That’s what we used to call cowardice,” he said.
He dismissed claims that Western ideas of freedom of expression did not apply in India where violence between religious communities has claimed thousands of lives in the last two decades and said the country was in danger of crushing free speech in the name of religious tolerance.
People must be free to be rude about other people’s ideas and comments, he said. “The idea that we shouldn’t upset people is widely accepted in India..[but] who gives people who are upset the right to attack me? he asked.
Rushdie terms Imran Khan a dictator in waiting
