Salman Rushdie in festival
Tuesday, 24 January 2012
Written by Islamstory
Author
Salman Rushdie will now address the Jaipur literature festival via video-link,
organisers say.
There had been doubts about Mr Rushdie's speech amid controversy over his participation in the festival.
Mr Rushdie withdrew from the festival, saying that sources had told him of an assassination threat. He later said he had been lied to about the threat.
Many Muslims regard his book, The Satanic Verses, as blasphemous and it is banned in India.
Mr Rushdie lived in hiding for many years after Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa calling for his execution.
Indian Islamist hardliners had demanded Mr Rushdie be denied a visa because of The Satanic Verses.
'Life and times'
Festival organiser Sanjoy Roy told reporters that Mr Rushdie would address the festival for an hour via video conference at 15:45 local time (10:15 GMT) on Tuesday.
The author will speak on his Booker-prize winning novel Midnight's Children and his "life and times", Mr Roy said.
Mr Roy denied media reports that the organisers had to seek any permission from authorities or give them any undertaking to enable Mr Rushdie to speak via the video-link.
"We hope the session will happen peacefully with the support of everybody and within the laws of the country," he said.
Police in Jaipur say they are investigating whether Mr Roy and four authors broke the law by reading excerpts from The Satanic Verses at the Jaipur event.
A number of complaints have been filed and some Muslim groups said they would protest over any video-link.
Earlier, Mr Rushdie accused authorities in Rajasthan of giving "false intelligence information" of the threat to his life.
Rajasthan authorities said Mr Rushdie's allegation was "baseless" and that they had "confirmed information" about a threat to his life.
Festival organisers said on Tuesday that they had got information from the Rajasthan government "and other sources" about a threat to Mr Rushdie's life and conveyed it to the author.
Separately, a number of authors attending the festival have petitioned the government to reconsider the ban on The Satanic Verses.
Salman Rushdie was born in India but is a British citizen and has lived in the UK for most of his life.
In recent years he has made many private visits to India and attended the Jaipur Literary Festival in 2007.
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