Writer Amitava Kumar speaks to Aseem Chhabra about life after he read from The Satanic Verses at the Jaipur Literary Festival.
Essential Services, A Very Short Story, by Amitava Kumar.
Leading Islamic seminary Darul Uloom Deoband on Wednesday demanded that "controversial authors" be kept away from the Jaipur Literature Festival in the PinkCity.
Kavita Srivastava, national secretary of People's Union for Civil Liberties, has revealed that six complaints have been registered against four authors: Amitava Kumar, Hari Kunzru, Jeet Thayil and Ruchir Joshi, besides the organisers of the Jaipur Literture Festival, for hurting religious sentiments and conspiracy.
The Salman Rushdie row refused to die down on Sunday with a police complaint being filed against the four authors who read out portions from the controversial author's banned book Satanic Verses at the Jaipur Literature Festival.
Days after his reading from The Satanic Verses created a furore and resulted in a police case, author Hari Kunzru on Sunday said he did not believe he had broken the law by reading from a downloaded segment of the book and had no intentions to hurt the feelings of anybody.
'The colloquial language forced a turn to the recent past and I thought about the hangings of men like Afzal Guru and Yakub Memon.' 'Whatever their deeds, proven or still in doubt, did their deaths not deserve to be mourned by a sister, wife, or child?' A fascinating excerpt from Amitava Kumar's Writing Badly Is Easy.
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