Exercise in Futility

When the Supreme Court of India recently dismissed a petition to ban Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses, it sent out a powerful message: book banning is a relic of the past.

- BY SANTHOSH MATHEW

Salman Rushdie

In an age where information travels faster than ever before, censorship of literature is both futile and regressive. What once may have been enforced by governments with confiscations and customs checks is now undone by a simple download link, a digital library, or a shared PDF file. The attempt to control the spread of ideas by banning books is like trying to stop a flood with bare hands.

It is a battle already lost. The case of The Satanic Verses epitomizes the futility of book banning. Published in 1988, Rushdie's novel sparked a global firestorm. It was accused of blasphemy, banned in several Muslim-majority countries, and outlawed in India within days of release. Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa against the author, making Rushdie a target for decades. Translators and publishers faced violent reprisals, and Rushdie himself survived an assassination attempt as recently as 2022. Yet despite the bans and threats, the book has remained in circulation worldwide. This pattern repeats itself across history. In South Asia, Taslima Nasrin's Lajja (1993) was banned in Bangladesh for allegedly insulting religious sentiments.