This post supplements the previous post

There are two camps, three, truth be told. As there always are in everything that matters, and even doesn’t, in this word. One in favor, one against and one that just don’t give a damn.

Salman Rushdie deserves the knighthood, he doesn’t and who gives a damn if he sits in exalted company of Ian Botham.

I naturally sit in the first of the camps, now and then taking a stroll into the third where I have good friends to have a cuppa.

Zafar at DreamInk bandies that the man has suffered enough, missed out a few Bookers, been hunted, haunted and tormented. This is a little tidbit of happiness coming his way and he must just be allowed that.

Priyavada Gopal sees it in a different light. She doesn’t care much for Salman, it is quite clear. Her views are pretty strong too.

But.

One strange thing I have noticed when this piece of news is thrown around is ‘Salman Rushdie, the author of Satanic Verses...’ It belies fact. A man is recognized by the best work he has done, Salman’s best was not Satanic Verses. It was with Midnight’s Children that he made the impact, changed the world.

He took the literary world by the tail, swung it around several times like a hammer thrower and flung it. He changed the perceptions of writing in India, paved the way, unmistakably, for the likes of Arundhati Roy, Ghosh, Vikram Chandra and more. He made it possible for every writer in India to dream of recognition.

He looked in the eye of all writers writing in English at the time and said: There yet is another way to do it.

Not many books can claim to have set a precedent, his did. That is what he should be commended for and that is what he should be exalted for.

I may be presumptuous, but I have a feeling – inkling – that the book did that to many other writers from different parts of the world, gave them a sense of belief, a direction, a hope. That you don’t have to write in Queen’s English or just have to follow the precedents set by the masters, you can create your own, make new ones. He liberated them.

He had a part, to put it figuratively, in selling every book by a writer of Indian origin -Naipaul included - after Midnight’s Children.

And that’s what he should be remembered and honored for. Sir Salman Rushdie – author of groundbreaking Midnight’s Children.

I believe that and I will defend that with every last bit of change in my pocket.