Fanatics and fatwas must not win

Not many people imagined that fanaticism and vengeance borne of it had so long a memory as to follow a writer through decades and to stab him, as they did with Salman Rushdie in New York on Friday. Writers have been attacked in the past for what they wrote or spoke or even thought, and Rushdie has been in this place before. He lived in hiding for many years after Iranian spiritual leader Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa for his assassination for the alleged blasphemy in his book The Satanic Verses. The fatwa technically exists even now but Rushdie came out of his hiding when the danger to his life seemed to have receded. He has continued to get threats, but recently said they may be more rhetorical than real.

The attack in New York shows that the threat has always been real. The death sentence on Rushdie is the most well-known case of intolerance and threat to freedom of expression in recent times. The idea that artists and writers, in fact all individuals, have the right to freely express their views is not accepted in reality in most societies. This is true not only with totalitarian countries and theocracies but with democracies, too. The Satanic Verses was banned in many countries, including India. The response with bans, threats, attacks on life and punishment by other means is more frequent now, signalling that the world has turned more intolerant. Sentiments, religious, political and of other kinds, are hurt too frequently and too quickly, and the reactions to them have become ever more violent. Hadi Mater, the one who stabbed Rushdie, is not alone, and lives in many others. But societies regress when they reject and exclude criticism and disallow debate, and this is not realised even in democracies.

It is ironic that the writer of Midnight’s Children, which is among the most imaginative retellings of India’s story after its birth at midnight on August 15, 1947, was attacked just ahead of the 75th anniversary of the event. Rushdie himself missed being a midnight’s child by two months. The writer, who mixed history with fiction and the real with the unreal, recreated a truer picture of post-Independence Indian reality. He told other stories too, most with India’s flair and flavour. It is a disgrace that writers are punished for their words, and the world is a worse place for that. It is not realised that knives can’t tear words but only make them sharper, and they live on. The world should rally for the freedom of the writer, the joker and everyone, and should not let the fanatic win.