{"id":1248,"date":"2012-01-21T20:33:21","date_gmt":"2012-01-21T20:33:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/freedimensional.org\/?p=1248"},"modified":"2017-04-10T09:24:17","modified_gmt":"2017-04-10T09:24:17","slug":"fearing-assassination-salman-rushdie-cancels-appearance-at-jaipur-literary-festival","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fd.artistsafety.net\/2012\/01\/fearing-assassination-salman-rushdie-cancels-appearance-at-jaipur-literary-festival\/","title":{"rendered":"Fearing assassination, Salman Rushdie cancels appearance at Jaipur literary festival"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Salman Rushdie has canceled his talk at Jaipur’s literary festival after hearing rumors that there were plans to assassinate him.<\/p>\n

The controversial author was due to speak about his early work Midnight’s Children at India’s biggest literary festival, which began on Friday, though influential Muslim cheap oakley sunglasses<\/a> clerics had protested his participation,\u00a0BBC News reported<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“I have now been informed by intelligence sources in Maharashtra and Rajasthan that paid assassins from the Mumbai underworld may be on their way to Jaipur to ‘eliminate’ me,” Rushdie said in a statement that was read out at the festival.<\/p>\n

The author’s controversial 1988 book\u00a0The Satanic Verses<\/a>\u00a0is still banned in India, and it incited Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruohollah Khomeini\u00a0to issue a fatwa calling for his execution,\u00a0according to The Guardian<\/a>. The threat caused the author \u2014 who was born in India but has lived in Britain for most of his life \u2014 to remain in hiding for many years.<\/p>\n

Rushdie has visited India privately several times, and attended the\u00a0Jaipur literary festival<\/a>\u00a0in 2007.<\/p>\n

Author and festival organizer William Dalrymple called Rushdie’s decision to stay away from the festival “a great tragedy,” BBC reported. Rushdie will speak via video conference http:\/\/www.gooakley.com\/<\/a> instead, according to reports.<\/p>\n

On Jan. 10, Darul Uloom Deoband, a leading Islamic seminary in India, called on the government to block Rushdie’s visa as he “had annoyed the religious sentiments of Muslims in the past,” according to the BBC.<\/p>\n

The literary festival, in which over 250 authors will be participating, began as scheduled on Friday, according to the BBC. Participants include\u00a0Michael Ondaatje and Ben Okri, playwright Tom Stoppard, journalists David Remnick and Philip Gourevitch and TV host Oprah Winfrey.<\/p>\n

Tens of thousands of people are expected to attend the festival.<\/p>\n

The festival’s producer, Sanjoy Roy, said there was a Oakley Sunglasses cheap<\/a> need in India “to question … why we continue as a nation to succumb to one pressure or another.”<\/p>\n

“This is a huge problem for Indian democracy,” he told The Guardian.<\/p>\n

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Text reposted from Globalpost.com. Image taken from Vanityfair.com<\/em><\/p>\n