For journalists, it is a great story either way – whether Salman Rushdie makes an appearance in Jaipur or not. For commentators, the episode opens up myriad ways of analyzing events. For the moment, however, let us look at some stray stories running parallel to the Rushdie story that turned 30 last year after Midnight’s Children completed three decades in existence.

On April 6, 1981 when Saleem Sinai first came to life in the pages of the UK edition, India was more than a month away from Rajiv Gandhi formally joining politics. In May, Gandhi enrolled for the Congress Party and in June, was elected to the Lok Sabha from Amethi – the vacant constituency that elected deceased brother, Sanjay, in 1980.

Salman Rushdie

Salman Rushdie. Pic: AP.

Seven and half years after Midnight’s Children became a literary watershed, Rajiv Gandhi and Salman Rushdie encountered each other professionally without possibly ever meeting over the issue at hand. In October 1988, the Indian government banned import of copies of Satanic Verses published barely a month earlier The ban by the Indian government was four months before Iran’s Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa calling for the death of Salman Rushdie.

Rajiv Gandhi was prime minister then and was busy assuaging fundamentalists of all hues. His political fortunes were on the downswing due to a concerted anti-corruption campaign and parliamentary polls were due in less than a year. He predictably accepted the plea of two lawmakers who claimed that Satanic Verses would create a law-and-order situation.

Twenty-three years and a few months later it is the threat to the same situation that appears to have resulted in Rushdie being politely told to stay away from the Pink City!

In the three decades and odd since Rushdie’s advent (I am discounting Grimus); and the unfolding of the story – the latest chapter is being read in Jaipur – it has had two parallel narratives. The more politically significant of these began in August 1980 – eight months after Indira Gandhi’s triumphant return on the slogan: “Vote for those who can run a government”.  Between August and November, Moradabad earned infamy by becoming the stage of continuing communal riots and often state-protected pogrom against Muslims. Just a year and a half after the publication of Midnight’s Children communal riots broke out in Meerut in September 1982 and Uttar Pradesh was on its way to becoming India’s first theatre where religion would play a preeminent role in electoral politics.

By 1988, Rajiv Gandhi had compromised with Muslim communalists on the Shah Bano judgement and had tacitly played along with Hindu zealots by not taking action to prevent unlocking of the disputed shrine in Ayodhya to Hindu devotees. Protests against the banning of imports of Satanic Verses was led as much by secular forces as much by votaries of Hindutva who cited it as another instance of ‘appeasement’ of Muslim fundamentalists.

In post-Godhra India, communalism has not been as major an issue as it was in the two preceding decades. Similarly, Rushdie has had to cope mainly with personal turbulence. Why then this chapter? Only because polls in India are round the corner?