Midnight's warrior: Salman Rushdie's literary battles on and off the page

Indian Express

12 hours ago

Consciously or not, Salman Rushdie, celebrated for Midnight's Children (1981) and infamous for The Satanic Verses (1988), has consistently been a man at war. Whether battling censorship, religious extremism, or cultural hypocrisy, he has never hesitated to wield his pen like a sword. And, has paid a steep price for it: a fatwa that forced him into hiding, a lawsuit brought by a prime minister, and most recently, a knife to the eye in an assassination attempt.
Over the years, the 78-year-old winner of the Booker of Bookers (1993) and the Best of the Booker (2008) has been involved in several feuds, be it with political regimes: Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini (1989) and former Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, or fellow writers and literary critics: John Updike, Marathi Jnanpith laureate Bhalchandra Nemade or John Carrie.
Here are some of the feuds drawn from his own pen, his Twitter account, and public record:
While Indira Gandhi and Salman Rushdie never met, their cold war was relegated to literary history after the latter immortalised the former Prime Minister as 'the Widow' in Midnight's Children. She was painted as a menacing, witchlike figure with whose 'hair has a centre-parting it is green on the left and on the right black,' who imprisons and castrates the titular Children of Midnight. Gandhi was far from amused and brought a libel suit in 1984 over a line that accused her of neglecting her late husband, Feroze Gandhi, to the point of hastening his death. Rushdie defended his choices: 'Literature can and must give the lie to official facts.'
In an interview, he laughed off Gandhi's outrage: 'You are having a quarrel with a fictional character, with a boy who has a nightmare about a widow when he's a child, and then feels that she comes to life … don't ask me, ask him.'
He was satisfied that the label 'Widow' had entered popular usage: 'It's always very nice to give an insult to the English language.'
While Gandhi's legal team demanded redress, Rushdie said, 'I felt that I should have sent her a thank-you telegram for having completed my novel for me,' he quipped, referring to Gandhi's decision to end the Emergency and call elections, which allowed him to conclude the novel as he wished.
In 2006, John Updike opened his New Yorker review of Shalimar the Clown with a groan. 'Why, oh why, did Salman Rushdie, in his new novel, call one of his major characters Maximilian Ophuls?' The name, Updike was suggesting, made it difficult to disentangle the character from the historic German film director, Max Ophüls, and by using the name he had turned both the man and the character into a caricature.
'Why not? Somewhere in Las Vegas there's probably a male prostitute called John Updike,' responded Rushdie, in an interview with The Guardian. He went on to criticise Updike's novel Terrorist as 'beyond awful' and suggested the critic return to 'his parochial neighborhood and write about wife-swapping, because it's what he can do.'
Perhaps his most enduring feud was the one with the British author John le Carré, best known for his espionage novels. It all started in 1997, when le Carré, writing to The Guardian, complained about accusations of anti-Semitism in his novel The Tailor of Panama (1996). Rushdie responded by saying that le Carré had shown little solidarity when Rushdie faced the fatwa following the publication of The Satanic Verses. From there, the exchange spiralled. Rushdie called le Carré 'a pompous ass,' and Le Carré retaliated by accusing Rushdie of 'self-canonisation.'
Their very public war of words continued for weeks, through the pages of The Guardian. Two decades later, Rushdie extended an olive branch at a literature festival, saying: 'I wish we hadn't done it. I think of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy as one of the great novels of postwar Britain.'
Le Carré responded in kind, saying: 'If I met Salman tomorrow, I would warmly shake the hand of a brilliant fellow writer.' Thus the two British authors put the feud to bed.
Grumpy old bastard. Just take your prize and say thank you nicely. I doubt you've even read the work you attack. http://t.co/TavuYkxe2u
— Salman Rushdie (@SalmanRushdie) February 6, 2015
In 2015, after Marathi novelist Bhalchandra Nemade won the Jnanpith Award, he said Salman Rushdie and VS Naipaul were 'pandering to the West' and declared that Rushdie had 'written nothing worthwhile since Midnight's Children.'
Nemade was also in favour of eliminating English from Indian school curricula and dismissed the idea of Indian-English literature as inferior to vernacular writing. Rushdie took to Twitter to respond. Calling him a 'grumpy old' man, he wrote: 'Grumpy old … Just take your prize and say thank you nicely. I doubt you've even read the work you attack.'
The same year, six writers—Peter Carey, Michael Ondaatje, Rachel Kushner, Teju Cole, Francine Prose, and Taiye Selasi—boycotted a PEN American Center gala honouring Charlie Hebdo, following the deadly terrorist attack on the magazine's staff.
.@JohnTheLeftist @NickCohen4 The award will be given. PEN is holding firm. Just 6 pussies. Six Authors in Search of a bit of Character.
— Salman Rushdie (@SalmanRushdie) April 27, 2015
Carey said the award 'went way beyond PEN's role of protecting writers against government oppression,' accusing the organisation of 'cultural arrogance.' Rushdie, a longtime champion of PEN and defender of free speech, responded with a misogynistic slur: 'Just 6 …… Six Authors in Search of a bit of Character,' he tweeted.
He later said: 'These six writers have made themselves the fellow travellers of [fanatical Islam]. Very, very bad move.'
Aishwarya Khosla is a journalist currently serving as Deputy Copy Editor at The Indian Express. Her writings examine the interplay of culture, identity, and politics.
She began her career at the Hindustan Times, where she covered books, theatre, culture, and the Punjabi diaspora. Her editorial expertise spans the Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Chandigarh, Punjab and Online desks.
She was the recipient of the The Nehru Fellowship in Politics and Elections, where she studied political campaigns, policy research, political strategy and communications for a year.
She pens The Indian Express newsletter, Meanwhile, Back Home.
Write to her at [e-mail] or [e-mail]. You can follow her on Instagram: @ink_and_ideology, and X: @KhoslaAishwarya. ... Read More