Over the years, the 78-year-old winner of the Booker of Bookers (1993) and the Best of the Booker (2008) has been involved in several feuds, be it with political regimes: Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini (1989) and former Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, or fellow writers and literary critics: John Updike, Marathi Jnanpith laureate Bhalchandra Nemade or John Carrie.
Here are some of the feuds drawn from his own pen, his Twitter account, and public record:
Rushdie versus Indira Gandhi: A fictional widow and a real lawsuit
Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children caricatured former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi as “the Widow.” (Source: amazon.in)
While Indira Gandhi and Salman Rushdie never met, their cold war was relegated to literary history after the latter caricatured the former Prime Minister as “the Widow” in Midnight’s Children. She was painted as a menacing, witchlike figure whose “hair has a centre-parting it is green on the left and on the right black,” who imprisons and castrates the titular Children of Midnight. Gandhi was far from amused and brought a libel suit in 1984 over a line that accused her of neglecting her late husband, Feroze Gandhi, to the point of hastening his death. Rushdie defended his choices: “Literature can and must give the lie to official facts.”
In an interview, he laughed off Gandhi’s outrage: “You are having a quarrel with a fictional character, with a boy who has a nightmare about a widow when he’s a child, and then feels that she comes to life … don’t ask me, ask him.”
He was satisfied that the label “Widow” had entered popular usage: “It’s always very nice to give an insult to the English language.”
While Gandhi’s legal team demanded redress, Rushdie said, “I felt that I should have sent her a thank-you telegram for having completed my novel for me,” he quipped, referring to Gandhi’s decision to end the Emergency and call elections, which allowed him to conclude the novel as he wished.
Story continues below this ad
‘There’s probably a male prostitute called …’: Rushdie versus Updike
Author and literary critic John Updike slammed Salman Rushdie’s Shalimar the Clown, while the latter took potshots at his book, Terrorist. (Wikimedia Commons; amazon.in)
In 2006, John Updike opened his New Yorker review of Shalimar the Clown with a groan. “Why, oh why, did Salman Rushdie, in his new novel, call one of his major characters Maximilian Ophuls?” The name, Updike was suggesting, made it difficult to disentangle the character from the German film director, Max Ophüls, and by using the name he had turned both the man and the character into a caricature.
“Why not? Somewhere in Las Vegas there’s probably a male prostitute called John Updike,” responded Rushdie, in an interview with The Guardian. He went on to criticise Updike’s novel Terrorist as “beyond awful” and suggested the critic return to “his parochial neighborhood and write about wife-swapping, because it’s what he can do.”
“A pompous ass,” Rushdie versus John le Carré
John le Carré complained about accusations of anti-Semitism in his novel The Tailor of Panama. (Wikimedia Commons; amazon.in)
Perhaps his most enduring feud was the one with the British author John le Carré, best known for his espionage novels. It all started in 1997, when le Carré, writing to The Guardian, complained about accusations of anti-Semitism in his novel The Tailor of Panama (1996). Rushdie responded by saying that le Carré had shown little solidarity when Rushdie faced the fatwa following the publication of The Satanic Verses. From there, the exchange spiralled. Rushdie called le Carré “a pompous ass,” and Le Carré retaliated by accusing Rushdie of “self-canonisation.”
Their public war of words continued for weeks, through the pages of The Guardian. Two decades later, Rushdie extended an olive branch at a literature festival, saying: “I wish we hadn’t done it. I think of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy as one of the great novels of postwar Britain.”
Story continues below this ad
Le Carré responded in kind, saying: “If I met Salman tomorrow, I would warmly shake the hand of a brilliant fellow writer.” Thus the two British authors put the feud to bed.
“Grumpy old …”: Bhalchandra Nemade vs Rushdie
In 2015, after Marathi novelist Bhalchandra Nemade won the Jnanpith Award, he said Salman Rushdie and VS Naipaul were “pandering to the West” and declared that Rushdie had “written nothing worthwhile since Midnight’s Children.”
Nemade was also in favour of eliminating English from Indian school curricula and dismissed the idea of Indian-English literature as inferior to vernacular writing. Rushdie took to Twitter to respond. Calling him a “grumpy old” man, he wrote: “Grumpy old … Just take your prize and say thank you nicely. I doubt you’ve even read the work you attack.”
Rushdie & PEN walkout
The same year, six writers—Peter Carey, Michael Ondaatje, Rachel Kushner, Teju Cole, Francine Prose, and Taiye Selasi—boycotted a PEN American Center gala honouring Charlie Hebdo, following the deadly terrorist attack on the magazine’s staff.
Carey said the award “went way beyond PEN’s role of protecting writers against government oppression,” accusing the organisation of “cultural arrogance.” Rushdie, a longtime champion of PEN and defender of free speech, responded with a misogynistic slur: “Just 6 …… Six Authors in Search of a bit of Character,” he tweeted.
He later said: “These six writers have made themselves the fellow travellers of [fanatical Islam]. Very, very bad move.”
Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children caricatured former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi as “the Widow.” (Source: amazon.in)
Author and literary critic John Updike slammed Salman Rushdie’s Shalimar the Clown, while the latter took potshots at his book, Terrorist. (Wikimedia Commons; amazon.in)
John le Carré complained about accusations of anti-Semitism in his novel The Tailor of Panama. (Wikimedia Commons; amazon.in)