A video address by British author Salman Rushdie to a book festival in India was scrapped on Tuesday after police warned that Islamic hardliners in the crowd posed a security threat to the event. Some Muslim groups had opposed the video link because of alleged blasphemy in Rushdie’s 1988 novel “The Satanic Verses”, which remains banned in India. Sanjoy Roy, the producer of the Jaipur Literature Festival, said police had advised organisers that Muslim activists were planning to disrupt the address as thousands of festival-goers gathered to listen to Rushdie.
Rushdie last week withdrew from making a personal appearance at the event when Indian intelligence officials told him that assassins from Mumbai were heading to Jaipur, though he later said he believed the plot was a fake. “There are people within this audience who have been sent in here to disrupt the proceeding. There would be perhaps some violence or an aggressive situation,” Roy told the crowds. Police at the five-day festival, a major social and business occasion that attracts tens of thousands of book fans from India and abroad, had been keen to prevent any protests that could fuel religious tension.Some Muslim groups entered the venue grounds on Tuesday and demanded that Rushdie, who lived in hiding for 10 years due to death threats over “The Satanic Verses”, be prevented from participating even by video. Mumbai-born Rushdie vowed to appear by video link when he pulled out on Friday, saying on Twitter that he had been told by Indian officials that a “mafia don” had issued weapons to two named hitmen to kill him. Local politicians in Jaipur later denied reports that the death threat had been concocted by police to avoid demonstrations at the festival.
Ram Pratap Singh, the owner of festival venue, told the crowd he had taken the decision “on advice of the Rajasthan (state) police who are monitoring the situation, who say there is a large number of people… threatening violence.”
