HINDUSTAN TIMES, TELEGRAPH INDIA, TIMES OF INDIA (India)
CALCUTTA- Author Salman Rushdie’s visit to Calcutta to promote the film adapted from his novel “Midnight’s Children” has been cancelled, due to security issues.
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Rushdie, who spent years in hiding after his 1988 novel The Satanic Verses earned him a fatwa death sentence from Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini, was in India for the promotion of the film, reports the Telegraph India. Calcutta was supposed to be the last stop on the tour of his native country.
Phone calls from police officers as well as “a senior minister” were made to the organizers of the Calcutta Book Fair, sources said. As well as that, The Times of India reported that Muslims from various groups had gathered to protest the arrival of the novelist at the airport.
In an interview last week with the Hindustan Times, Rushdie said: “It feels like I’m closing a big circle that begun when I was very young; like I’m bringing the film of the novel back home.”
He added that he was “bored of being called controversial” and hoped that the Muslims and Hindus in the country would “hold their nerve” so that the promotion of the film would not be embroiled in trouble.
