LEAD: Rushdie's video conference at Indian festival cancelled

Jan 24, 2012, 12:26 GMT

New Delhi - Organisers of a literary festival in India on Tuesday cancelled a discussion that was to be joined via video link by author Salman Rushdie, citing security concerns.

Muslim activists opposed to Rushdie's participation entered the Diggi Palace in Jaipur, raising fears of violence, the venue's owner said.

Some Muslims say Rushdie's book The Satanic Verses, which is banned in India, is blasphemous.

Rushdie was scheduled to attend the festival in person but cancelled his trip after intelligence agencies pointed to threats to his life. This prompted organisers of the Jaipur Literary festival, an immensely popular annual event, to arrange the video-link discussion on Rushdie's life and work.

Diggi Palace owner Ram Pratap Singh said he was forced to withdraw permission for the discussion out of concern for the security of the thousands of participants.

'With extreme regret, after three weeks of unfolding of this idiotic situation, we are forced to step down in our fight for freedom of expression, freedom to write, freedom to tell our stories,' Sanjoy Roy, one of the organisers of the festival told the audience waiting to hear Rushdie.

'This is not a decision we can support. We have been pushed to the wall,' Roy said.

The controversy over Rushdie's attendance at the festival, an immensely popular annual five-day event, first arose after an influential Muslim seminary opposed his participation.

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.

Roy said at no time did the government tell the organizers that Rushdie should not come to the festival. However, police warned on Tuesday there could be violence.

'But the commissioner said we could go ahead and they would provide protection,' he said.

Rushdie, a British citizen whose ancestors came from the region of Kashmir, attended the Jaipur festival in 2007.

Observers have linked the hostile reaction to his visit to a February legislative election in India's largest state of Uttar Pradesh, where Muslims comprise 19 per cent of the population.

'The whole episode is sad indeed and paints India in a very poor light,' former radio journalist and author Mark Tully was quoted as saying by NDTV news channel.

'There are obviously political considerations by the government and some of the protesters,' Tully said.