BaKhabar, February 2012, Page-5 [It's All About Elections Stupid! An article on Satanic Salman Rushdi, by sister Asma Khan]

better light a candle than curse the darkness

It's All About Elections Stupid!

... By Asma Khan (asmaanjum.khan@gmail.com)

Asma Khan, a social reformer, analyses the excessive love of Jaipur Literary Festival attendees for Rushdie.

Will he come, won't he come, the petals were being plucked and the wait was becoming unbearable[for some!] and breaths were kept abated,
Would he , could he, would he join the dance?
Would he , could he, could he join the dance!
The man who fooled the West ,never came, paid assassins were after him ,he insisted.
Foolish, he sighed later about his belief in the Indian Police.
We sighed too , we knew it already.
The beautiful Jaipur Literary Festival was held ransom to this one man whose literary merit is doubtful beyond a doubt and whose write ups are strewn with abuses like pearls in a delicate string. The government did the usual show shaw of obstructing his arrival while smiling secretly and contentedly at its own furtive Mission Election. After this, it was Mission Impossible for Rushdie.

When it became clear that he was not coming , a few of the writers turned to a more outrageous thing, that is reading from his book. Hari Kunzru, Amitava Kumar and others came together for a cause they claimed. I thought how wonderful to invite them for doing the same with poor James Laine here in Maharashtra, who couldn't earn his fame with his Shivaji, a Hindu King in Muslim India, like Rushdi did with his Satanic Verses. Wonder if this filthy mouthed Salman would have become The Rushdi that he is today, if not for this filthy work. Interestingly, the country of his residence Britain has blasphemous libel restricted only for Christianity. This effectively means, as Fali S. Nariman says [Indian Express dated Jan23, 2012] that if the four women in his book had been linked to Jesus Christ, in 1988, he would have been guilty of the criminal offence of blasphemy in England - the Bastion of Free Speech!
Pooh!
But I am conveyed blasphemy is no longer an offence in Britain according to Criminal Justice Act 2008. Before it, came Racial Hatred Act, 2006, which can penalize people if they try to run down eminent personalities with deliberate intention to cause religious hatred. Now we know how difficult it is to prove an intention!
As spoken earlier, I wish the likes of Kunzrus and his ilk, who went overboard outrageously by reading from that filthy work, would do the same in Maharashtra and read from James Laine; after all the battle for free speech must be fought at all the fronts. Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute was ransacked and many ancient monuments and works severely damaged only because James Laine acknowledges the museum as helping him with his work. A scholar was assaulted severely, and a famed politician longing for a Chief Ministerial position had thundered, we would never allow James Laine to come here and no, this book, insulting our hero can never be published. So, what if the court had cleared its way for publication? I wonder which fatwa was working here, then! Also do we remember that great artist M.F. Husain, who in exile, longed dearly to be in the land of his birth but could never make it in time? The fear of unjustified persecution and numerous libel suits filed against him kept this “great artist” away and he had to perish on the foreign shores. Do we ask why? Where were all these pseudo intellectuals cum liberators of the Free Speech, then? Why was Husain not helped? Why were his immortal paintings not displayed near Jhandewalan in Delhi, or Gandhinagar in Ahmedabad? Why was Husain asked to remove his works time and again from the art exhibitions all over the country? Why shouldn't Jay Leno be allowed to wrongly and insultingly call a highly revered religious temple of the Sikhs, the Golden Temple at Amritsar, as the summer home for Mitt Romney, a leading Republican presidential hopeful?
Where does it really end?
The liberal extremists must be conveyed that we all care for our freedoms; yours, mine and everyone's, and if you don't care for the sanctity of your religious figures, that doesn't translate into my doing the same.

Video: How Rushdie Fooled The West: http://bit.ly/xY5ObF
Text of Ahmed Deedat's book on Satanic Salman: Pls do read the text version: http://bit.ly/xDbwL4 (Adult content)

Turn now to a live chat by the denizens of Diggy Palace [feel tempted to say it’s all about TRP Stupid!] There was no letting go of the chance that was seized perfectly at the right moment by the organizers which included the likes of Sanjoy and William Dalrymple. A live chat show by Salman Rushdie now. After all JLF had to be in the news, so what if it is for all the wrong reasons! Also it’s no big deal, if hundreds of other writers gathered at Jaipur remained overlooked and over shadowed by this one manipulative fool called Rushdie. Then the expected happens, a handful of people have gathered outside Diggy Palace. The reason is found, the live chat show cancelled, the Tamasha is complete; seems so.

But wait, there is more coming, something still needs to be done, if not this way, then let's take a round and come round the bend. A Muslim religious figure is to be invited and subjected to a volley of expected questions, and booed and jeered continuously by the panelists and the crowd. While ducking the questions, the muslim fumbles, mumbles, and jumbles, turns around towards the hyper secular Mr. Javed Akhtar and asks, What was the question?
How innocent!
Cut back to Barkha Dutt now, expressing her grave concerns for and about Salman, egging him on. The man in question mouths his usual tirades, Deobandis are the worst, he claims, [Yeah, how happy it has made the Tableeghis and Qaadris and Ahl e Hadeeths, you don't know Satanic Salman!] The humiliation is complete now.
This Salman knows where to rub the salt and pulls up his socks for the next visit to the country he says he has emotional bonds with. I begin wondering ... alone this time? Padma Lakshmi was at the Gateway of India last, who now? The paraplegic? Oh no! She had dropped him too, then?
TV debates rage with fury, swords are drawn but as they seemed rusted with over and misuse are kept back where they were. Now is the time for couch potatoes like us to comment; oh Barkha, she the......? How dare she?
Mouths fuming, faces reddening, I watch perplexed. My five year old calls out to me, Mumma look, the kite!
Its flying high!

I sigh! Barkha flying high too; too high for her, conveniently forgetting the Nira Radia episode!
The art of arguing is a fine art, says Aristotle. We the Muslims have little appetites to swallow the half-baked prejudiced pieces of opinion packed therein on the panels and still keep up a smiling face. We must now learn, and learn fast.
A smile here and a kick there, a nudge there and a wink here, it’s all fair in the game! Though unequal one at that, we still need to play by the rules. Anger betrays weakness and makes the opponent smell a victory. It’s simply not done. Mr. Asaduddin Owaisi as a panelist, is a case in point; a huge successful presence in such debates; and what a fine presence he has indeed!
If anyone thinks that all this spectacle of unnecessary controversy was brought upon us by our own hands, then let me tell them, do not give yourself such importance, we are the eternal pawns, forever to be fooled, gladly at that!. The Congress is rather conveying you, it’s all about (UP) elections, stupid!
The lessons we learn from this kabuki of Jaipur Lit fest can be, do your homework first or else you will make a fool of yourself by asking to revoke the visa of Rushdi, while he not needing one as the Satan in question has a PIO status. Second, learn to stand up to your convictions. If they tell you that they bowed to the pressure of the fundamentalists, tell them, how you wish you could see the same in some other matters of minorities of far more greater urgency? [For example, unjustified arrests of our youths on a regular basis; and what about the reports of Sachar and Rangnath commissions?] Third, let's get our acts together and see to it that our voices reach the other end; and not just reach but seen to be reached and acknowledged. Else, be ready to be pounded by the pseudo liberals like the team India getting beaten up badly by the Oz in Australia.