India’s Delhi High Court has lifted a three-decade-long import ban on Salman Rushdie’s blasphemous novel The Satanic Verses.
The ruling comes after Indian authorities, who are well-known for their anti-Islam bias, failed to produce an official record of the 1988 ban, which previously restricted the book’s sale and distribution in the country for more than 30 years.
The case was brought to court in 2019 by Sandipan Khan, a reader who had been unable to find the original notification banning the book on any official government website.
The Delhi High Court’s decision on November 5, 2024, was based on the government’s admission that the ban order was “untraceable.” The official said to have authored it was likewise unable to provide a copy.
Why was the ban imposed?
Upon publication of the Satanic Verses in 1988, Muslims worldwide were outraged by a character called “Mahound,” who appears in dream sequences in the novel and was alleged to be “a thinly and perversely disguised representation of the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh).”
The name Mahound was used in medieval Christian plays to represent satanic figures, and some Muslims concluded that Rushdie was implying that Muhammad (pbuh) was a false prophet.
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In the book, Rushdie also gave the names of the Prophet’s wives to twelve prostitutes in a brothel. And he invoked a discredited and false tradition – the so-called satanic verses – in which Satan inspired Muhammad (pbuh) to compromise with the people of Mecca and to allow them to continue to worship other deities in an attempt to lure them to Islam.
India’s then Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi, imposed an import ban on the book, citing the need to maintain law and order in the face of violent demonstrations.
Despite Rushdie’s condemnation of the ban, calling it politically motivated and anti-democratic, The Satanic Verses remained inaccessible to Indian readers for decades.
Will the book now be sold in India?
However, the lifting of the ban does not immediately guarantee the availability of The Satanic Verses in Indian bookstores. Although the ruling allows for the importation of the book, it will depend on publishers and booksellers to decide whether to stock it.
Penguin Random House India, which holds the rights to the book in India, issued a statement on Friday, calling the ruling a “significant new development.” It added that it was “thinking through next steps.”
Some bookstore employees have indicated that it may take time before the book appears on shelves, as they await guidance from the publisher.
Despite the ruling, individuals or groups who object to the content could still seek to block the book’s sale or distribution, according to Uddyam Mukherjee, Sandipan Khan’s lawyer.
Zafar-ul-Islam, former head of the Delhi Minority Commission said: “It would have been more impactful, if the court had gone further to speak its mind on this arbitrary ruling… This is a work that has lost its shock value, with digital copies still readily accessible to readers.”
As of now, it remains unclear when the book will be available in Indian stores. Sandipan Khan, the petitioner who challenged the ban, has expressed his intention to buy a copy once the book becomes available, either from local retailers or through international online sellers.
