Author: Utpal Kumar
Publication: Firstpost.com
Date: September 10, 2026
URL:   https://www.firstpost.com/opinion/salman-rushdie-strikes-again-this-time-in-silly-man-style-14044622.html/amp

Nearly killed by Islamist terror, Rushdie is today silent about it; instead, he is vocal about an imagined Hindutva terror.

Sir Salman got his surname from the Arabic word Rushdi, meaning “mature” or “wise”. His life, however, suggests that this otherwise brilliant novelist has often been anything but mature or wise. And now, he can be accused of being economical with the truth — or, worse, of peddling falsehoods and distortions.

There he was, in an interview recently, being asked about the RSS chief’s recent visit to New York. The framing of the questions was disturbingly biased. The anchor began by describing the RSS as “a Hindu nationalist organisation” that has been “described as a far-right paramilitary organisation accused of committing human rights violations”.

A far-right paramilitary organisation? Really?

But Salman Rushdie, far from being perturbed by this description, went on to add a sweeping comparison of his own: “It is unfortunately the case that a lot of Indian Americans” — here he paused to add — “Hindu Americans are attracted to the idea of Hindu nationalism. You can compare it, if you want, to the way in which Irish Americans used to support the IRA.”

The comparison is extraordinarily reckless. The Irish Republican Army, during the Troubles (from the late 1960s to 1998), carried out thousands of armed actions, shootings and bombings. In 1972 alone, the Provisional IRA reportedly carried out more than a thousand bomb attacks. Over three decades, London was repeatedly targeted with explosives. Encyclopaedia Britannica estimates that the Provisional IRA killed about 1,800 people between 1969 and 1994, including about 600 civilians.

To equate support for the RSS among Hindu Americans with Irish-American support for the IRA is therefore an extremely irresponsible comparison. But Rushdie’s distortions did not stop there. When asked whether the “secular India” in which he “grew up in a secular Muslim family” was gone forever, he replied: “Forever is a long time.”

So, “is secular India retrievable”?

Sir Salman responded: “I am very impressed by young people in India. Enormously impressed by the women who are refusing the kind of limitations on the way women are supposed to behave.”

It is a suitably progressive-sounding response, but it sidesteps truth, again. Large numbers of young Indians, including women, have repeatedly voted for the BJP since 2014. Perhaps Rushdie’s view of contemporary Bharat is increasingly shaped by the ‘secular’, ‘liberal’ and elitist circles in which he now lives.

Rushdie then accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of being “in part responsible” for the 2002 post-Godhra Gujarat violence. Even more disturbing was the disdain he appeared to show for the country’s democratic and legal institutions. He said: “Many of us suspect that the leadership of Gujarat, one of the big states of India — and he was the chief minister — that the Hindu leadership of the state was involved in encouraging what became a murderous moment in the life of the state. I mean, look, we have to say that he was exonerated, but what does that mean, and who did the exoneration?”