On October 5, 1988, when India became the first country to ban the import of Salman Rushdie’s novel The Satanic Verses, some commentators chose to take a potshot at former diplomat and politician Syed Shahabuddin. They ranked him as the world’s most influential literary critic, their point being that his heft was evident as he had successfully campaigned for banning the book without even reading it. It’s anybody’s guess whether he read the book or not. The novel, as is widely known, had outraged Muslims around the world and many saw it as blasphemous.
More than three decades later, access to the triggering material is not a problem as the outrage in Arab countries over derogatory remarks made against Prophet Muhammed by two spokespersons of the Bharatiya Janata Party has shown. A clip of the comments made on TV by one spokesperson and a tweet by another have been circulated far and wide. Yet, it’s the outrage in Islamic countries in general and the Arab world in particular which is being seen as the key reason behind the action taken against them. The BJP’s decision to suspend one of the spokespersons, Nupur Sharma, and expel the other, Naveen Jindal, has also been seen as delayed and primarily shaped by considerations of external relations.
