Rushdie to address Indian festival via video link

Jan 24, 2012, 9:29 GMT

New Delhi - Author Salman Rushdie, who cancelled his visit to a literary festival in India after intelligence agencies reported assassination threats, would participate in the event Tuesday through video link from London, the event's organizers said.

The controversy over Rushdie's attendance at the Jaipur Literary Festival, an annual five-day event in the Rajasthan state capital, arose after an influential Muslim seminary opposed his participation.

Rushdie's book The Satanic Verses is banned in India. The author was forced to spend more than a decade underground after Iran's then-leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, issued a fatwa in 1989 calling for Rushdie to be killed over the book.

'The one-hour programme with Rushdie would be a discussion on his book Midnight's Children and his life and times ... not on any book banned in this country,' said Sanjoy Roy, one of the organizers of the festival.

Roy said at no time did the government tell the festival organizers that Rushdie should not come to the festival. 'The government shared intelligence information with us, which we shared with Mr Rushdie,' Roy said.