| Summary/Abstract |
In the lifetime of the older ones among us, freedom of expression in
India first became a hot item with the Salman Rushdie affair, when in
1988, his novel The Satanic Verses was banned. This was done by
Rajiv Gandhi’s Congress government at the request of Muslim leader
Syed Shahabuddin, in exchange for the latter’s calling off a Muslim
march on Ayodhya (then a hotspot because of the temple/mosque
controversy) expected to cause bloodshed.
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