Chhagan Bhujbal was a 'walking political cartoon': Salman Rushdie

On a visit to India to film a documentary on 40 years of independence, author Salman Rushdie found Maharashtra politician Chhagan Bhujbal a "walking political cartoon" and was amazed when he was denied permission to film a Sikh woman widowed in the 1984 riots.

Narrating the visit for the Channel 4 documentary titled 'The Riddle of Midnight', Rushdie writes in his memoir, 'Joseph Anton', released this week, that the only politician he interviewed at the time was Bhujbal, who was then a leader of the Shiv Sena.

The documentary was to "make a portrait of India at forty" through the eyes and in the voices of 40-year-old Indians; "not quite midnight's children, but children of the year of freedom, at least".

Rushdie had also turned 40 in 1987.

Narrated in the third person, Rushdie writes of the visit: "There was black comedy. The only politician he interviewed was Chhagan Bhujbal, the first mayor of Bombay to be a member of the Shiv Sena.... headed by a former political cartoonist, Bal Thackeray".

He goes on: "Chhagan Bhujbal was a walking political cartoon. He allowed TV crew to accompany him to the annual Ganpati celebrations and film how that festival in honour of elephant-headed Ganesh, which was once a day of celebration for members of all religious backgrounds, had been reduced to a fist-thumping, neo-Nazi assertion of Hindu power". Rushdie quotes Bhujbal as saying: "You can call us fascist... We are fascist. And you can call us racist. We are racist".

Rushdie and his crew's travels took them to Delhi, Kerala, Jammu and Kashmir, and Mumbai.

In Old Delhi, he met Imam Bukhari, who agreed to meet him "because 'Salman Rushdie' was a Muslim name".

"After the Khomeini 'fatwa' this same Imam Bukhari denounced the author of The Satanic Verses from the pulpit of the Jama Masjid without knowing that they had once had a more or less cordial encounter".

... contd.

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