Jaipur:
Barely two hours after the organisers of the Jaipur Literary Festival confirmed that Salman Rushdie would join the event via a video link from London, protests at the venue are leading to reports that the session with Mr Rushdie may yet be cancelled. Organisers are reportedly meeting with the police right now.
He is scheduled to join the literary festival at 3.45 pm from a studio in London in a session that will be moderated by NDTV's Barkha Dutt.
At a press conference this morning, the organisers of the event said the law will be respected, and that the Rajasthan government has clarified that no permission is needed for this session. "We have been in constant touch with Mr Rushdie...he will talk about his life, his work and his book
Midnight's Children. But I am not in a position to dictate to Mr Rushdie what he wants to talk about," said the main organiser of the festival, Sanjoy Roy.
Mr Rushdie's video chat has been teetering on the brink of uncertainty after four writers read excerpts from his banned book
The Satanic Verses over the weekend. They were protesting against Mr Rushdie's withdrawal from the event because of security concerns, both for his personal safety and for that of the literary festival.
The writer was allegedly told last week by the Rajasthan police that 'paid assassins' had been hired to target him. He later said he had been misled by the police. The Rajasthan government, however, maintains that there was a threat to Mr Rushdie's life if he were to travel to Jaipur.
A series of complaints have been filed in different courts against Mr Roy and the writers who read from
The Satanic Verses - Ruchir Joshi, Amitava Kumar, Hari Kunzru and Jeet Thayil. The police have not registered any cases so far against them.
Mr Rushdie has attended the literary festival in the past. This time, the Islamic seminary in Uttar Pradesh, the Darul Uloom Deoband, asked the government not to allow Mr Rushdie to visit India. The writer and the government pointed out that as a Person of Indian Origin, he doesn't need a visa to travel to India. But a faction of Muslim clerics warned that they would stage protests, and the state government seemed unwilling to check them. Mr Rushdie, like the festival's organisers, was then warned of the alleged danger of his visit. And he decided not to attend the event in person.