'May better sense prevail': Salman Rushdie to NDTV on fringe groups who force ban on artistes

The film adaption of Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie's iconic book on the birth of a nation in 1947, is all set to release in India shortly. The author, often dogged by threats and controversy, after the writing of the banned Satanic Verses, said he was sick and tired of 'controversial' being used as a prefix to describe him. Speaking to NDTV along with the director of Midnight's Children, Deepa Mehta, Mr Rushdie said it's not him, but extremist groups who enforce bans on books and artistes, who should be called controversial. Commenting on the pressure from some fringe groups to stop authors who read from Mr Rushdie's work at the Jaipur Literature Festival last year from attending this year, along with calls from other groups to stop Pakistani authors from attending, Mr Rushdie said, he hoped better sense prevailed, and it's these groups who needed to be dubbed controversial, not the authors and artistes.