Can you buy Salman Rushdie’s ‘The Satanic Verses’ in India now?

Here’s some good news for Salman Rushdie’s fans. ‘The Satanic Verses’, a controversial novel by India-born British author Salman Rushdie, can now be imported into India after 36 years of ban on it.
A Delhi court ruled last week that India’s three-decade-old ban on the import of the book, ‘The Satanic Verses’, has to be presumed to be non-existent. This was not because of a change of heart more than two years after Rushdie’s near-fatal stabbing, but because of some missing paperwork.
Rushdie’s fourth fictional novel ‘The Satanic Verses’ ran into a global controversy shortly after its publication in September 1988, as some Muslims saw passages about Prophet Muhammad as blasphemous. It sparked violent demonstrations and book burnings across the Muslim world, including in India, Reuters reported.
Following this, the then Rajiv Gandhi government banned the import of the Booker Prize-winning author Salman Rushdie’s “The Satanic Verses” for law-and-order reasons in 1988.
Indian author Manu Joseph posted in 2022, “India was the first to ban ‘Satanic Verses’ which it did by making it illegal to import the book.”
When India banned “The Satanic Verses,” Rushdie condemned the action and doubted whether his censors had even read the novel. In an open letter to then-Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, published in The New York Times in 1988, Rushdie alleged the book was “being used as a political football” and called the ban not only “anti-democratic, but opportunistic.”
“The Satanic Verses” also elicited a fatwa, calling for Rushdie’s death from Iran’s Ayotollah Ruhollah Khomeini, forcing the author into hiding in 1989. He gradually resumed a normal life, especially after Iranian officials announced in 1998 that the government had no plans to enforce it.
Petitioner Sandipan Khan had argued in the Delhi High Court that he was unable to import the book “The Satanic Verses” on account of a notification issued by the Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs on October 5, 1988, banning its import into the country in accordance with the Customs Act.
But Khan said the notification was not available on any official website or with any of the authorities concerned.
In an order passed on November 5, a Delhi High Court bench headed by Justice Rekha Palli said that since authorities have failed to produce the relevant notification, it has to be presumed that it does not exist.
During the court proceedings, authorities said the notification was untraceable and, therefore, could not be produced, news agency PTI reported. As a result, the court said it had “no other option except to presume that no such notification exists”. The court also said that Khan has the right under law to procure this book.
The Delhi High Court was hearing a 2019 case challenging the import ban on the book in India.
The bench, also comprising Justice Saurabh Banerjee, said last week, “What emerges is that none of the respondents could produce the said notification dated 05.10.1988…in fact, the purported author of the said notification has also shown his helplessness in producing a copy of the said notification during the pendency of the present writ petition since its filing way back in 2019.”
“In the light of the aforesaid circumstances, we have no other option except to presume that no such notification exists, and therefore, we cannot examine the validity thereof and dispose of the writ petition as infructuous,” the bench concluded.
Khan’s lawyer, Uddyam Mukherjee, reportedly said the court’s ruling meant that as of now, nothing prohibits anybody from importing the novel into India. “The ban has been lifted as of November 5 because there is no notification,” Uddyam Mukherjee, the lawyer for petitioner Sandipan Khan, was quoted by Reuters as saying.
The Indian government has not commented on the matter yet. Rushdie, now a citizen of the United Kingdom and the United States, has yet to comment publicly.
Lawyer Uddyam Mukherjee told The Associated Press that it will depend on the publishers or sellers to sell the books in bookstores. “…whether this [ruling] means it will be sold in bookstores — I don’t know, that depends on the publishers or sellers,” he said.
“What the ruling does is open up a potential path for the book to become available here,” Mukherjee said. He, however, added that any aggrieved individual, group or the government can also appeal against it.
The report quoted an employee of Jain Book Agency in New Delhi as saying that they did not know whether this news meant that the novel would be available again in stores in India. The employee said if that was the case, it could still take time and that they would need to hear from the publisher.
Rushdie’s publisher in India, Penguin Random House India, issued a statement on Friday, calling the ruling a “significant new development”. It added that it was “thinking through next steps,” the Associated Press reported.

“He doesn’t have a clear answer to this yet — if it becomes available in India, he will buy a copy of it,” petitioner Khan’s lawyer Mukherjee said. “But he can also potentially buy it from international booksellers online, as it’s no longer illegal to import the book into the country,” he added.
(With inputs from agencies)