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Keywords: The Enchantress Of Florence, Salman Rushdie

It’s been 20 years since the controversy surrounding Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses, but the 60-year-old is now a force to reckon with in global publishing. He can’t avoid the spotlight whether it’s his views in Islam or his trouble-split with fourth wife Top Chef Padmalakshmi. But it is his writing that does the talking being not just the Booker but also Booker of Bookers for Midnight’s Children. CNN-IBN’s Anirudh Bhattacharyya speaks to the master of magical realism as his latest novel The Enchantress of Florence releases worldwide.

Anirudh Bhattacharyya: Salman Rushdie thank you so much for joining us here today. Your new novel The Enchantress of Florence has Akbar, the great the Mughal king at the cenrtre of the novel, why did you place him as a character in that role?

Salman Rushdie: He wasn’t originally going to be in the book at all. Originally the book was going to be about a Mughal Princess who gets lost, captured and parceled across the world and she arrives in Renaissance Italy and falls in love with an Italian soldier of fortune.

I thought that was going to be the story in the novel but when I was beginning to write it, I felt that there was a dimension missing because since my original idea was to try and bring together these two different worlds, I thought if the whole action happens in the West then there is a side of a story not there and at a relative point I had an idea of beginning a story later than the story of the princess with this supposed descendant of hers, a young European traveler arriving in the Mughal Court to tell the story of what happened to her.

At that point I felt that the book came into balance. The world of the East, the world of the West, the world of India and the world of Renaissance Italy acquired a proper balance. On the one hand you had major historical figures like Machiavelli and Medeches on the other hand equally important historical figures like Akbar and his courts.

Anirudh Bhattacharyya: That is one question I wanted to ask you because Akbar’s rule was supposed to be an age of enlightenment in India and of course when you talk about Florence in the Renaissance it is the age of enlightenment again. Is that a coincidence again or is that something that you actually meant?

Salman Rushdie: Yes, there was a reason. It was to say here are these two cultures at a kind of peak and yet it was a time when historically they had very little connection with each other so I thought let me see what happens if you actually give them a connection and see how they interact.

Also, I thought it was interesting and important in a way to say everybody says about the European Renaissance that it is a period at which important ideas, humanistic ideas about the value of the individual human being, the value of the self rather than the group…if you look at the philosophy of Akbar, the philosophy of the high Mughal period that very similar idea about the individual worth and so on that Indian humanism was also coming into being so I wanted to say that this kind of idea was not just western.

It doesn’t just come into being in just one place at one time and then get exported. It actually grows naturally in more than one culture and has an Indian root as well as a European one.

Anirudh Bhattacharyya: There is another character of course, Jodha. We have heard a lot about that in Indian history. According to you in your book, she was actually a figment of Akbar’s imagination, is that a literary or is that actual history?

Salman Rushdie: That is a literary device. In the book that he makes her up is a fiction of mine. But what is true is that there was no such person as Jodha Bai and I like anyone can do this piece of work if they feel like it or if there are two or three primary sources for the reign of Emperor Akbar.

Two histories written by his courtier Abul Fazl wrote the Akbar Nama and Aine Akbari and the book written by the much more critical figure, Badauni the historian. These are enormous works, which literally talk about the day-by-day life of Akbar’s court and his reign and there is no reference to anyone called Jodha in any of them. There is simply no historical record of such a figure.

However, having said that he did marry a Rajput princess. He married princesses from the royal houses of Jodhpur and Amber but they had different names. The Queen of Akbar was also a Rajput princess, was not called Jodha Bai she was called Mariam Muzzamani and as the name suggests she was not an un-converted Hindu, she was a convert to Islam and she is the mother of the Emperor Jahangir not Jodha Bai.

The only Jodha who exists in the historical record is one of the lesser wives of Jahangir, one of his minor wives and has no significance historically. But having said that who cares. The truth is that the essentials are true which is that Akbar when he conquered the various princely states of Rajasthan did follow a policy of not executing the people he defeated but incorporating them in his government and often getting married with one of their daughters to cement their friendship and there is more than one Rajput princess in the harem of Akbar so that’s true.

It’s simply that this particular one and the legend of Jodha that she remained a Hindu and he tolerated it and he performed her religious observances along her, you can see why it is a legend that people want.

It corresponds to an image of India in which there is a kind of tolerance and it gives it a historical ancestry, which is very noble. You can see why people want the story and it is good that people should have myths that describe to them the world they want to live in. The legend of Akbar and Jodha is one such myth. It tells us how we want our world to be but that doesn’t mean that it she really existed.

Anirudh Bhattacharyya: You said at one point who cares. Apparently people in India do care because there was controversy about this film which released recently simply Jodhaa Akbar.

Salman Rushdie: Get over it. Who cares that 400 years ago there was a princess with a certain name or not? It is an absurd thing to make a fuss about. Every Indian historian that I have talked to agrees with me that this is not a piece of history but a piece of legend. It seems to be a fuss over nothing.

I haven’t seen the movie but I am saying just in general. This is all I think to get upset about. I do worry about the fact that nowadays people in India get upset over every damn thing. Suddenly a kind of culture of offendedness is taking root in India that in a way is very harmful to the cultural life of the country.

If Deepa Mehta can’t make a movie, if M F Husain can’t paint pictures and if libraries in Pune are attacked because somebody doesn’t like something that somebody said Shivaji. If this is the world we are living in then it is an impoverishment to India.

Anirudh Bhattacharyya: Recently you had protests against Tasleema Nasreen. She says it is really difficult for her to stay on India. M F Husain is virtually an exile. They have problems every time they go to India. You meet protests whenever you travel to India. Is there a culture of intolerance coming to India?

Salman Rushdie: I think that there is. In my own case it is very strange because it is not every time, I have been to India a lot in the last 10 years and almost every time it has been completely trouble free. On this occasion there were 12 people turning up at the door. You know in India 12 people is less than zero.

I was at the Jaipur festival last year. I have been around a lot without protest. But I do think that in the case of other people it is a real problem and the idea that Husain can’t go to India is genuinely tragic and the idea that India will probably douche his work because he is building his museum space in Dubai to house his paintings. Those paintings belong to India and it is a great impoverishment of India’s culture that they can’t be there. They might be physically in danger as the paintings are not just Husain

At this moment when India is so proudly presenting itself to the world as an enormously, rapidly advancing, modernising potential super power but this part will drag it down. Nobody wants, I don’t want people to think of India as another China where you can’t say anything without being clapped in jail or beaten up.

We don’t want that kind of religious version to happen in India. I think that it is really important that every level, the government level, the industrial level, the individual level of the liberal intelligentsia, people have to really stop pandering to this, stop tolerating it. It has to be made clear that this is not acceptable. Tasleema Nasreen had to go into an exile and I think that it is sadness for India that a person like her cannot find a safe haven inside her own language.

I know a little bit of her and I know that for her existing outside the Bengali language is very difficult. It is appalling that she has been obliged to take that decision.

Anirudh Bhattacharyya: Is it a concern for you that this level of intolerance when you go to India, is there a thought that there could be violence?

Salman Rushdie: As I say that the many times that I have been to India, it hasn’t been a concern because no such problem has arisen. This time this little problem arose. I hope that it is a one-off. I hope that it is a storm in a teacup but I would be very disappointed to feel that kind of noise was going to surround me again 20 years since that was an issue.

Anirudh Bhattacharyya: Will you be going to India to promote this book?

Salman Rushdie: No, not to promote the book because the problem is that my commitments in England and the United States have taken up all my time and from now on to the middle of July. By then it will be too late to go to India to talk about the book that is coming out now. So I thought instead I do the promotion in this way by talking to you guys here and also other Indian journalists based here.

I will go to India in a much more enjoyable way but I don’t have to promote the book.

Anirudh Bhattacharyya: Your third book Shame was on Pakistan and a lot of things have happened in Pakistani politics. The generation of Bhuttos have come up now in politics. What is your take on what is going on in Pakistan?

Salman Rushdie: It has been a long timer since I have been to Pakistan so I am looking at it from outside like everyone else. I think first of all al it is straight forwardly that a democratical action has taken place in a country which has not often been given the privilege of an election which seems genuinely to have reflected the will of the people and this election was not fixed. I am not sure that people wanted to fix it but it seems that it was not possible to fix it because the weight of public opinion was so great.

You actually have a situation in which a country has a government that people genuinely voted for. Eve though the most extraordinary thing the consequence of the death of Benazir had been that these two deadly rivals, Nawaz Sharif and the PPP find themselves getting into bed together, I hope that it lasts. So all of this is to be celebrated.

Fortunately people in India have been able to take democracy for granted with the exception of the couple of years of the 70s of the emergency, for Pakistan it has been a much rarer commodity so I think that it is a good thing. I think that the removal of power from Musharaf is a good thing.

I think the restoration of the position of the deposed justices is an excellent thing. It seems to me that the rule of law is as important in a free society as freedom of expression. Those are the two pillars of any free society so to see the rule of law having an effect in Pakistan is a good thing.

Anirudh Bhattacharyya: Let’s talk about democracy and elections and elections in the United States where you live now. Who are you supporting?

Salman Rushdie: I don’t have a vote. So in that sense I am not supporting anyone because I can’t physically do so. But I have been watching these primaries with incredible fascination. I think that it has been one of the most really, genuinely interesting elections for a long time because I think that there have been on the democrat side. They have genuinely two very strong candidates. If Hillary were chosen I could quite easily support her and likewise Obama.

It wouldn’t be hard to get behind either of them. I took a long time to think about that and if I had a vote then I would probably vote for Obama because I think that he has an extra dimension which is inspirational as his affects on the young people in US has been galvanising and that is good friendly democracy to bring young voters. For me the clincher was the speech he made about race as I thought that it was the most magnificient speech and speech that I have not heard from any politician anywhere in a very long time and at that point I thought that’s the guy I want.

Anirudh Bhattacharyya: Let me ask you a couple of personal questions now because you travel to India and you travel to Mumbai. How would you have seemed to be linked to a new starlet in Mumbai in Bollywood. A lot of names have come out. Is there any truth to that at all?

Salman Rushdie: That is an interesting question. I was in Mumbai and I met all sorts of people and have gotten on very well with them thank you.

Anirudh Bhattacharyya: A personal question and a more serious one. You were separated recently, how difficult was that and what brought about?

Salman Rushdie: It is not that recently but it has been more than a year now. It was awful. It was a very sad event that I did not generate, I did not want it to happen. I tried very hard to prevent it from happening but in the end if people want to go their own way then that’s what they have to do. I am still very sad about.

It was a terrible year for me and I think that in many ways this book saved my life. The thing that I wasn’t able to do I did do and that was to plunge into my work and seek in the works some of the happiness that was available outside. I do think that oddly it is kind of a joyful book.

It is strange to me to read it and find that quality of passion and joy in the book, which was the opposite of how I was feeling though I wasn’t writing a book. As to why it happened I think that is a private thing.

Anirudh Bhattacharyya: Mr Rushdie thank you so much for spending all this time with us today.

Salman Rushdie: Thank you.