(8 Nov 2024)
++CLIENTS PLEASE NOTE: SHOT 4 – AUDIO MUTED AS PER RESTRICTION SET BY JUDGE++
ASSOCIATED PRESS
New York – 17 May 2023
1. Various of Salman Rushdie posing at PEN America gala
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Toronto – 9 September 2012
2. Medium of Salman Rushdie and Deepa Mehta arriving on red carpet
3. Medium of Rushdie talking to a reporter
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Mayville, New York – 13 August 2022
++MUTE++
4. Suspect Hadi Matar enters courtroom
ASSOCIATED PRESS
New York – 5 May 2015
5. Medium shot of Salman Rushdie talking to reporter at reception
6. SOUNDBITE (English) Salman Rushdie, author/PEN member:
"If you’re a free expression organization, if you believe in the value of free speech, then you must believe in the value of free speech that you don’t like. If you only defend free speech that conforms to your own moral framework that’s what is normally called censorship."
7. Medium shot of Salman Rushdie posing for photos
STORYLINE:
The decadeslong ban of Salman Rushdie’s “The Satanic Verses” in his native India is now in doubt — not because of a change of heart more than two years after the author’s near-fatal stabbing, but because of what amounts to some missing paperwork.
Earlier this week, a court in New Delhi closed proceedings on a petition filed five years ago that challenged the then-government’s decision to ban the import of the novel, which enraged Muslims worldwide because of its alleged blasphemy, just days after its 1988 publication. In a ruling issued Tuesday, according to the Press Trust of India news agency, a bench headed by Justice Rekha Palli said authorities had failed to produce the notification of the ban.
“We have no other option except to presume that no such notification exists,” the judges concluded.
The petitioner, Sandipan Khan, had argued that he couldn’t buy the book because of a notification issued by the Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs on Oct. 5, 1988, which forbade its import into India, adding that he was unable to locate the notification on any official website or through officials. Khan’s lawyer, Uddyam Mukherjee, said that the court’s ruling meant that as of now, nothing prohibits anybody from importing the novel into India.
“But whether this means it will be sold in bookstores — I don’t know, that depends on the publishers or sellers,” he told The Associated Press.
Rushdie’s literary agent, Andrew Wylie, declined comment to the AP. Rushdie, now a citizen of the United Kingdom and the United States, has yet to comment publicly. He has more than 1 million followers on his X account, on which he last posted in September.
Rushdie’s U.S. publisher, Penguin Random House, issued a statement Friday called the ruling a “significant new development” and adding that it was "thinking through next steps.” The author’s publisher in India, Penguin Random House India, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Besides the ban in his native country, “The Satanic Verses” elicited a fatwa calling for Rushdie’s death from Iran’s Ayotollah Ruhollah Khomeini, forcing the author into hiding in 1989. He gradually resumed a normal life, especially after Iranian officials announced in 1998 that the government had no plans to enforce it. But his relative calm abruptly ended in 2022, when he was stabbed repeatedly onstage by a young assailant during a literary festival in western New York. Rushdie survived the attack, which left him blind in one eye, and wrote about it in the memoir “Knife,” a finalist this year for the National Book Award.
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