Monday, January 23, 2012

Complaint against authors who quoted 'Satanic Verses'! SOPA and PIPA Bills Are Dead: Wikipedia Blackout Caused Congress to Shelve These Fascist Bills!

Complaint against authors who quoted 'Satanic Verses'!

SOPA and PIPA Bills Are Dead: Wikipedia Blackout Caused Congress to Shelve These Fascist Bills!
Chetan Bhagat attacks Rushdie, says you can't hurt feelings in India as the Salman Rushdie row took a turn for the worse today as he accused the Rajasthan Police of cooking up the "threat" to keep him away from the Jaipur Literature Festival. As the police denied the charge, insisting they had "credible information" of the threat, four authors against whom a police complaint had been filed for reading out from Rushdie's Satanic Verses at the festival left the meet on Sunday. 

Salman Rushdie will not attend a literature festival in India after authorities warned the controversial author he was a potential target of assassins at the event, following threats of protests from Muslim groups at his planned appearance. Opposition from some Indian Muslim groups erupted this month after Rushdie was invited to attend Asia's largest literature festival, and senior Muslim leaders called on the government to prevent the 65-year-old author from entering the country. 

Muslim leaders have demanded India ban Salman Rushdie from entering the country to attend a literary festival, re-igniting a decades-old row about the Booker prize-winning author's works. Rushdie's 1988 novel "The Satanic Verses" was considered blasphemous by many Muslims and sparked calls for him to be killed, forcing the writer into hiding for years. He has visited India since, although the book is still banned there. As the Salman Rushdie episode looms large on the Jaipur Literature Festival, actorAnupam Kher today said the issue has been "politicised" while former Union minister and MP Shashi Tharoor opined that the controversial author should not be "reduced to a caricature" on one issue. 

"If we talk about freedom of expression, we should exercise that and allow people to do so, this issue was politicised. It went into a domain where it became difficult to pursue it in a way it should have been. But I am an optimist, and I hope something good will emerge out of this," Kher told reporters after the release of his book 'The Best Thing About You Is...You'. The actor-author was commenting on the issue of certain authors reading from the banned 'Satanic Verses' at the event earlier, disregarding festival authorities plea to not do so. Former minister of state for external affairs and Congress MP Shashi Tharoor, who was on a panel today with author Chetan Bhagat and discussing 'Survival strategies in the time of Twitterati", told reporters on the sidelines that Rushdie should not be "reduced to a caricature" on one issue. 

"I respect Salman Rushdie as a writer very very much. I think he has written some very important books that have lasted a long time. He should not be reduced to a caricature on one issue...," he said. When asked to comment on the festival organisers stopping writers from reading from the banned book, Tharoor said the organisers had asked the four authors not to read from the banned book out of concern. "I feel that literary festival organisers were anxious that people should not provoke or inflame an issue that is already sensitive that I fully respect," he said. Organisers of the festival said they had requested the authors to not read from the banned book keeping in mind security issues that have been pointed out to them.

"We have to care take of authors and so many people who attend the festival. We have to take any perception that is given to us by the authorities seriously. And both the police and the IB have been very supportive thereof. Whether it was true or not, ask them," festival producer Sanjoy K Roy said responding to the claims that the intelligence information provided to Rushdie was concocted. 

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