Salman Rushdie’s most controversial work, The Satanic Verses, banned in India since 1988, reignites the debate on free speech and artistic expression as Delhi High Court lifts the import ban
Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses, one of the most controversial works of fiction in contemporary literature, has been denounced, misunderstood, banned, and deemed heretical by several countries ever since it was published — seven years after Rushdie came out with his breakout second novel, the allegorical and the phantasmagorical, The Midnight’s Children. The Delhi High Court recently disposed of a plea seeking clarification on the Rajiv Gandhi-led Congress government’s ban on the novel’s import in 1988, after the Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs and other relevant agencies were unable to provide a copy of the notification, apparently issued under the Customs Act, 1962. The decision, which lifts the ban on its import (the novel will be finally available in India 36 years after it was originally published), brings the question of free speech and artistic expression to the centre stage once again.
The Satanic Verses, as steeped in magical realism as The Midnight’s Children, tells the interwoven stories of Gibreel Farishta, a Bollywood actor known for portraying deities who relocates to London, and another actor and expatriate named Saladin Chamcha, who fall from an exploded plane and find their lives forever changed. This descent and subsequent metamorphosis frame a narrative that undergirds questions of identity, belief, and the cultural dissonance experienced by immigrants. Sample this paragraph from the opening chapter to get a taste of Rushdie’s ingenious prose and wordplay:
“Gibreel, the tuneless soloist, had been cavorting in moonlight as he sang his impromptu gazal, swimming in air, butterfly-stroke, breast-stroke, bunching himself into a ball, spreadeagling himself against the almost infinity of the almost-dawn, adopting heraldic postures, rampant, couchant, pitting levity against gravity. Now he rolled happily towards the sardonic voice. “Ohé, Salad baba, it’s you, too good. What-ho, old Chumch.” At which the other, a fastidious shadow falling headfirst in a grey suit with all the jacket buttons done up, arms by his sides, taking for granted the improbability of the bowler hat on his head, pulled a nickname-hater’s face. “Hey, Spoono,” Gibreel yelled, eliciting a second inverted wince, “Proper London, bhai! Here we come! Those bastards down there won’t know what hit them. Meteor or lightning or vengeance of God. Out of thin air, baby. Dharrraaammm! Wham, na? What an entrance, yaar. I swear: splat.”
A fever-dream retelling of Prophet Muhammad’s story
The novel is interlaced with allusions to Islam, the Prophet Muhammad, and the early struggles of the faith; it challenges orthodoxies and blurs the lines between sacred and profane. However, to reduce The Satanic Verses to be just blasphemous is to miss the novel’s true ambition for its audacity lies in its literary ingenuity. Rushdie, known for his playful language and subversive techniques, creates a world where reality and the fantastical coalesce, forcing readers to grapple with the instability of truth. It’s a fever-dream retelling of the Prophet Muhammad’s story (renamed Mahound). It’s a novel that can leave you breathless, confused, and desperately flipping back to earlier chapters to check if you missed something (spoiler alert: you probably did).
Also read: How Salman Rushdie’s new memoir, Knife, is a writer’s act of reclamation
Now, what makes The Satanic Verses controversial? Critics claimed Rushdie had committed literary blasphemy. The Rajiv Gandhi-led government in India swiftly banned the book in 1988, proving that even democracies aren’t immune to impulsively smothering art in a blanket of censorship. The reasoning? The novel might ‘hurt religious sentiments’ — a phrase that can be used to justify stifling everything from suggestive poetry to satirical political cartoons. Rushdie, it seems, managed to both ignite and unite a bizarre coalition of the easily offended that included Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. It’s a novel bursting with irreverence — a pinch of the absurd here, a dollop of biting wit there — and an almost sacrilegious zest for life itself. The fact that The Satanic Verses remains misunderstood is ironic; Rushdie didn’t aim to mock Islam, but to question, to prod, and to explore. He dared to point out the cracks in the edifice of belief, and like all good provocateurs, he didn’t serve his critiques straight — he layered them in a cake of rich, exhilarating prose.
Saladin Chamcha literally becomes a devil in a London that views immigrants as monstrous. Rushdie holds up a mirror, and the reflection isn’t pretty: a Britain mired in xenophobia, treating outsiders as caricatures of evil. Chamcha’s transformation drives home the reality that those branded as ‘other’ often internalise the perceptions thrust upon them. Sure, you can read the novel as sacrilege — but that’s like saying Hamlet is just about a moody prince.
What The Satanic Verses teaches us
The absurdity of banning a book like this is that The Satanic Verses celebrates the very act of storytelling. It’s a tribute to the imagination, that boundless, irrepressible force that no fatwa or governmental decree can quite suppress or squelch. Rushdie revels in contradictions, the messiness of cultural and spiritual inheritance, the clash between East and West. Does the book wrestle with religion? Sure. But, frankly, those who can’t handle a little intellectual turbulence should probably stick to reading instruction manuals.
Also read: Knife review: Salman Rushdie’s gritty testament to the power of art, and love
In banning the book, the Indian government sent a dismal message: a weak-kneed government kowtowing to the pressures of those with hurt sentiments and curbing the freedom of speech. It turned India into a playground for religious zealots, implying that the mere potential of offense could justify censorship. If ideas are so dangerous that a book must be banned, then perhaps the fault isn’t with the book but with the flimsiness of those opposing it.
Rushdie’s ordeal didn’t just stop at bans; he became a global target, the very embodiment of free expression under siege. He has paid a heavy price for his commitment to free expression, living under the shadow of a fatwa for decades and suffering a violent attack in 2022 (you can read his memoir Knife in which he relives the horror). And still, he writes. He writes because to stop would be to admit defeat, to bow to a world where art must pass a moral purity test or risk obliteration. And we know we’d all be poorer for it. The joy of The Satanic Verses is its wild, uncontainable spirit, the way it refuses to apologise for being what it is — an audacious cauldron of ideas. It’s a book that whispers (or sometimes screams) that nothing, no concept, no figure, is beyond interrogation.
This isn’t a novel that wants to be liked; it wants to be reckoned with. And reckon with it we must, because a world that bans books is a world afraid of the very thing that makes us human: our capacity to think critically, to laugh at our own absurdities, to seek understanding even when it’s uncomfortable. The Satanic Verses has taught us that art, when done right, is dangerous. It shakes us awake, and in doing so, it liberates. So, should Rushdie be defended? Unequivocally. Should The Satanic Verses be read? Absolutely, if only to remind us that no one — and no faith — deserves to be shielded from scrutiny. Because what Rushdie knew, and what some would rather forget, is that stories have the power to reshape the world. And sometimes, the world needs a little reshaping, even if it involves falling from the sky and sprouting horns.
