India can import Rushdie’s Satanic Verses after ban order ‘untraceable’

A reader brought the case in 2019 after failing to find official proof of the ban on government websites.

A court in India has lifted a three-decade ban on Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses after authorities were unable to produce the original order prohibiting imports of the controversial novel.

The Delhi High Court quashed the 1988 import ban on Tuesday in a case brought five years ago by reader Sandipan Khan, stating that India’s government had said the notification banning the controversial book was “untraceable”.

“We have no other option except to presume that no such notification exists,” the court said in its order, which was reported on Friday, pointing out that even the customs department official who was said to have written it had “shown his helplessness in producing a copy”.

Khan said he filed his case after being told at bookstores that the novel could not be sold in or imported to in India. When he searched, he could not find official proof of the ban on government websites.

The Satanic Verses, set in London and ancient Mecca, Islam’s holiest site, was published in September 1988 to critical acclaim.

But the novel prompted global controversy shortly after its publication, as some Muslims saw passages about Prophet Muhammad as blasphemous.

It triggered violent demonstrations and book burnings across the Muslim world, including in India, which has the world’s third-largest Muslim population.

Months before his death in 1989, Iran’s first Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa, or religious edict, against Rushdie, and urged “Muslims of the world rapidly to execute the author and the publishers of the book”.

Iran’s 15 Khordad Foundation offered a multimillion-dollar reward for his murder.

The India-born British author, now 77 and a naturalised American citizen, went into hiding and has since become an outspoken defender of free speech. His book was banned in 20 countries, including his birthplace.

Rushdie gradually emerged from his underground life in 1991, but his Japanese translator was killed in July that year.

His Italian translator was stabbed a few days later and a Norwegian publisher shot two years later.

In August 2022, Rushdie was stabbed on stage during a lecture in New York, which left him blind in one eye and affected the use of one of his hands.

Then Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi banned the import of the book a month after it was published in 1988, hoping to win Muslim support before elections.

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Al Jazeera and news agencies