Vikram Seth condemns Rushdie episode

Celebrated author Vikram Seth on Thursday criticized the recent treatment given to London-based writer Salman Rushdie by not allowing him to either visit the recently concluded Jaipur Literature Festival (JLF) or even link with the gathering on the concluding day of the festival on Tuesday.

"People are not fools. It is election time. The whole affair was started because of power and politics and misuse of religion," Seth said on Thursday while addressing a gathering at Kolkata Literary Meet on the ongoing Kolkata Book Fair campus.

"Freedom of the mind, freedom of the heart ended in a disgraceful suppression of the mind, suppression of heart," he said, calling the whole episode disgraceful.

Interestingly, Seth on Thursday neither mentioned the name of Salman Rushdie or his much-talked about book ´ The Satanic Verses´ in his speech.

The entire episode have dragged immense amount of criticisms from literary intelligentsia.

A Muslim protest over his over two-decade-old writing against Prophet Mohammad and resultant capitulation of the Rajasthan government scuppered the video chat of Salman Rushdie with the JLF gathering on its concluding day on Tuesday, prompting the British Indian author to call the episode stifling of free speech and Indian politicians as a clan in bed with extremists.

The video conference, which was scheduled after Rushdie announced that he was not coming to the festival owing to warnings from authorities in Rajasthan of Mumbai underworld hired assassins being contracted to kill him, was called off by the owners of the venue and the organizers of the festival on the advice of the Rajasthan police, citing law and order concerns.

Earlier, Rushdie told media that the controversies connected with his recent visit to India had a link with the upcoming UP elections.