Rushdi's Hubris

Recently Salman Rushdie refused to participate in the Jaipur literature festival 2012 due to a threat of new assassination against him by the Muslims who were angered by his most controversial novel The Satanic Verses (1988). The DSC Jaipur festival is the largest literary festival in Asia pacific, and the most prestigious celebration of national and international literature to be held in India. It is said that the government of Rajasthan State failed to assure the security for him; so that he refused to come. However, it was not the first time Rushdie was going to address the Jaipur festival. He addressed the same festival in 2007 without any controversy and threat against him.

Salman Rushdie was born in Bombay, India, to a middle-class Moslem family. His paternal grandfather was an Urdu poet, and his father a Cambridge-educated businessman. At the age of fourteen Rushdie was sent to Rugby School in England. In 1964 Rushdie's parents moved to Karachi, Pakistan, joining reluctantly the Muslim exodus – during these years there was a war between India and Pakistan, and the choosing of sides and divided loyalties burdened Rushdie heavily.

Rushdie continued his studies at King's College, Cambridge, where he read history. After graduating in 1968 he worked for a time in television in Pakistan. He was an actor in a theatre group at the Oval House in Kennington and from 1971 to 1981 he worked intermittently as a freelance advertising copywriter for Ogilvy and Mather and Charles Barker.

Shortly before the publication of The Satanic Verses Rushdie had said in an interview, "It would be absurd to think that a book can cause riots." The novel was banned in India by the ministry of finance – about a week after it had been published in Britain – and South Africa and burned on the streets of Bradford, Yorkshire. Videoed images of the protest spread across the world.

After Rushdie had published the satanic verses in 1988, the supreme leader of Iran Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa calling for Rushdie’s assassination in1989. When Ayatollah Khomeini called on all zealous Muslims to execute the writer and the publishers of the book, Rushdie was forced into hiding. Also an aide to Khomeini offered a million-dollar reward for Rushdie's death. Within the weeks of threat made against him by the Mullahs of Iran, he was approached by the president of the Bard College and appointed as a faculty member. However at that moment, all sorts of people and institutions were running scared all over the world. Today, same red alert signals are flashing all over no matter how shaky is the ground under his feet.

According to the informants, Mumbai underworld may be taking the responsibility to eliminate him. “It would be irresponsible of me to come to the festival while assassination might have been awaited me”, said Rushdie. “Instead I would address the event via video link.” These statements seem more childish to me. When Salman Rushdie delivered a 1996 commencement speech at Bard College, he said “kneel before no man. Stand up for your rights.” For him fear was a kind of hubris, a human weakness, sin of defying the God. He also shared the moment of extreme humiliation at Cambridge during graduation that he was penalized for no reason by the Cambridge administration. Giving various examples of Greek myths and own experiences he finally said, “Do not bow your heads. Do not know your place. Defy the Gods. You will be astonished how many of them turn out to have feet of clay.”

However, Salman Rushdie on Sunday accused Indian police of making up an underworld plot to assassinate him that forced him to pull out of a literary festival this weekend. Rushdie withdrew from the event in Jaipur, the state capital of Rajasthan, after being warned by Indian officials that paid gunmen were heading to the city to kill him for his writing. Is this Salman Rushdie’s hubris? What did he mean to the young students of Bard College, “Do not bow your head? Do not know your place. Kneel before no man?” Or, he is the man of controversy?