India's ban on Salman Rushdie 'The Satanic Verses' may end — thanks to missing paperwork

NEW DELHI (AP) — The decadeslong ban of Salman Rushdie's “The Satanic Verses” in his native India is now in doubt — not because of a change of heart more than two years after the author’s near-fatal stabbing, but because of what amounts to some missing paperwork.

Earlier this week, a court in New Delhi closed proceedings on a petition filed five years ago that challenged the then-government’s decision to ban the import of the novel, which enraged Muslims worldwide because of its alleged blasphemy, just days after its 1988 publication. In a ruling issued Tuesday, according to the Press Trust of India news agency, a bench headed by Justice Rekha Palli said authorities had failed to produce the notification of the ban.

“We have no other option except to presume that no such notification exists,” the judges concluded.

The petitioner, Sandipan Khan, had argued that he couldn’t buy the book because of a notification issued by the Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs on Oct. 5, 1988, which forbade its import into India, adding that he was unable to locate the notification on any official website or through officials. Khan's lawyer, Uddyam Mukherjee, said that the court’s ruling meant that as of now, nothing prohibits anybody from importing the novel into India.

“But whether this means it will be sold in bookstores — I don’t know, that depends on the publishers or sellers,” he told The Associated Press.

When reached by phone, several bookstores in the country's capital were unaware of the news. An employee of Jain Book Agency in New Delhi said that they did not know whether this news meant that the novel would be available again in stores in India, adding that if that was the case, it could still take time and that they would need to hear from the publisher.

“What the ruling does is open up a potential path for the book to become available here,” Mukherjee said, but added that any aggrieved individual, group or the government can also appeal against it.

Rushdie's literary agent, Andrew Wylie, declined comment to the AP. Rushdie, now a citizen of the United Kingdom and the United States, has yet to comment publicly. He has more than 1 million followers on his X account, on which he last posted in September.

Rushdie's publisher in India, Penguin Random House India, issued a statement Friday called the ruling a “significant new development” and adding that it was "thinking through next steps.”

This week's ruling adds a new twist to Rushdie's complex relationship with India, where he was born in 1947, just before the country's independence. He left as a child and was living in the United Kingdom at the time of his breakout novel, “Midnight's Children,” which came out in 1981 and infuriated India's prime minister at the time, Indira Gandhi, who was satirized in the book. After she sued over a reference to her having caused her husband's death, Rushdie agreed to remove it and the case was settled.

When India banned “The Satanic Verses,” Rushdie condemned the action and doubted whether his censors had even read the novel. In an open letter to then-Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, published in The New York Times in 1988, he alleged the book was “being used as a political football” and called the ban not only “anti-democratic, but opportunistic.” Over the years, Rushdie has made private trips to India and attended the Jaipur Literary Festival in 2007. But five years later, he canceled plans to attend the Jaipur gathering because of security concerns. The festival did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the ruling.

Besides the ban in his native country, “The Satanic Verses” elicited a fatwa calling for Rushdie's death from Iran's Ayotollah Ruhollah Khomeini, forcing the author into hiding in 1989. He gradually resumed a normal life, especially after Iranian officials announced in 1998 that the government had no plans to enforce it. But his relative calm abruptly ended in 2022, when he was stabbed repeatedly onstage by a young assailant during a literary festival in western New York. Rushdie survived the attack, which left him blind in one eye, and wrote about it in the memoir “Knife,” a finalist this year for the National Book Award.

On Friday, Khan's lawyer said that his client was an avid book reader driven to find answers after he found out the novel was banned. He filed numerous requests for information with various authorities — and tried for over a year to get a hold of the notification. Mukherjee said Khan was told by authorities that it was not traceable.

“When we realized there was no hope, we proceeded to go to court and challenge the notification,” Mukherjee added.

The court also said that Khan has the right under law to procure this book. So how does he plan to get it now?

“He doesn’t have a clear answer to this yet — if it becomes available in India, he will buy a copy of it,” Mukherjee said. “But he can also potentially buy it from international booksellers online, as it’s no longer illegal to import the book into the country.”

Italie reported from New York. Associated Press journalist Chonchui Ngashangva in New Delhi contributed to this report.

FILE - Salman Rushdie poses for a portrait to promote his book "Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder", at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin, Germany, Thursday, May 16, 2024. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi, File)

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — A federal appeals court panel incorrectly interpreted federal and state laws when it ruled that Mississippi cannot count mail-in ballots that are cast and postmarked by Election Day but arrive a few days later, two groups argue as they seek a new hearing.

Attorneys for Vet Voice Foundation and Mississippi Alliance for Retired Americans are asking the entire 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to reconsider the ruling that a portion of the court issued Oct. 25.

The ruling did not affect the counting of ballots for the Nov. 5 election because the three-judge panel noted that federal court precedents discourage court actions that change established procedures shortly before an election.

However, the case could affect voting across the U.S. if the Supreme Court ultimately issues a ruling.

The attorneys for Vet Voice Foundation and the Mississippi Alliance for Retired Americans argue in court papers filed Friday that the panel of judges “incorrectly suggested that post-election day ballot receipt deadlines are a recent invention.”

“In fact, the practice of counting ballots cast by election day but received afterward goes back to the Civil War, when many states permitted soldiers to vote in the field before sending their ballots to soldiers’ home precincts," attorneys for the two groups wrote.

Many states have laws that allow counting of ballots that are cast by Election Day but received later, the attorneys wrote.

“Far from making any attempt to preempt these laws, Congress has acknowledged and approved of them for more than five decades,” they wrote.

The three-judge panel of the conservative appeals court reversed a July decision by U.S. District Judge Louis Guirola Jr., who had dismissed challenges to Mississippi’s election law by the Republican National Committee, the Libertarian Party of Mississippi and others.

Richard Hasen, a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law, wrote on his election law blog that the ruling by the appeals court panel was a “bonkers opinion” and noted that “every other court to face these cases has rejected this argument.”

Republicans filed more than 100 lawsuits challenging various aspects of vote-casting after being chastised repeatedly by judges in 2020 for bringing complaints about how the election was run only after votes were tallied.

The list of states that allow mailed ballots to be counted if they are postmarked by Election Day includes swing states such as Nevada and states such as Colorado, Oregon and Utah that rely heavily on mail voting.

In July, a federal judge dismissed a similar lawsuit over counting mailed ballots in Nevada. The Republican National Committee has asked the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to revive that case.

Guirola wrote that Mississippi’s law does not conflict with federal election laws. The suit challenging the Mississippi law argued that the state improperly extends the federal election and that, as a result, “timely, valid ballots are diluted by untimely, invalid ballots.”

Guirola disagreed, writing that “no ‘final selection’ is made after the federal election day under Mississippi’s law. All that occurs after election day is the delivery and counting of ballots cast on or before election day.”

Although the Mississippi challenge was led by Republicans and Libertarians, there is bipartisan support for the state's practice. Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch is defending the state’s top election official, Secretary of State Michael Watson, in the lawsuit. Both are Republicans.

Associated Press reporters Kevin McGill in New Orleans and Mark Sherman in Washington contributed to this report.

A precinct worker precuts "I Voted" stickers from a long roll prior to the site opening up for voters Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024, in Jackson, Miss. (AP Rogelio V. Solis)