Rushdie Wields His ‘Knife’ 

Winner of The Booker of Bookers, Midnight's Children writer Salman Rushdie needs no introduction, and he deserves a badge as a global free speech fighter since August 12, 2022. On that fateful day, he was stabbed 12 times within twenty-seven seconds when he was about to participate in an interaction about the importance of keeping writers safe from harm on the shore of Chataquae Lake, 400 miles west of the Statue of Liberty, United States.

When you are stabbed badly and somehow survive, luckily, during that gruesome survival process, what you do is meditate. Meditate on what happened and why. Rushdie's latest title, Knife, is his meditation on the very knife attack. His meditation is horrible. But the master craftsman of words has made the details thrilling and impressive.

He justified his position as a writer and practitioner of freedom of speech; that is what he has done throughout his life and was praised by the world, though some sects of the fanatic world detest him without reading what he has written. And that fanatic whim consequently triggered a shameful move, as a 'Satan' came with a knife, giving life to the fatwa issued by Ayatollah Ruholla Khomeini on February 14, 1989, declaring 'The Satanic Verses' blasphemous. And suddenly, 35-year-old Fatwa became real.

Rushdie says that to fight back, he needs to raise his knife, i.e., words. The details of that fateful event and its aftermath give the memoir a crime fiction flavour. The writing is full of thrills. In the 209-page book, you feel Rushdie's lightness every now and then. When he jokes to his son that after all the events in his support, he makes a light comment to his son, which was not well received by the latter.

I joked to Milan that all these occasions had something of the feeling of memorial celebrations. "When I actually die, nothing will happen, because it's all already been done." (p. 119)

Rushdie repeatedly mentions how much he was moved by all the support he would get from global citizens.

He thinks that the attacker "is wholly a product of the new technologies of our information age, for which disinformation age might be a more accurate name. The groupthink-manufacturing giants, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and violent video games were his teachers."

So, he argues, it's not only religion; any power that is prone to harm individuals and society should be checked to balance its razor that may harm otherwise. The other alarming statement Rushdie has made is about the scrutiny of social media. If unchecked and unregulated, it would stir social harmony.

The other complement he offers his readers is the plentiful literary references: he refers to one writer and one character to make one scene and sequence clear on a page, and he refers to another writer and another character to make another scene and sequence clear on the next page. It makes the book a literary fiesta, though the subject matter is grave. 

After all, having a close call with life and losing an eye is itself a grim consequence. But he has done everything he could to make it as light as a feather with the subtle use of Rushdique language.

The moving part of the book is his imaginative dialogue with his attempted murderer. In this chapter, he expresses the importance of free speech in a more polarised world. He has made it clear that he has "no issue with religion when it occupies this private space and doesn’t seek to impose its value on others. But when religion becomes politicised, even weaponized, then it's everybody's business because of its capacity for harm" (p. 182).

While the world is cherishing information technology as its most advanced outcome, where it has helped combat inequality as well as fighting against poverty, Knife highlights that the very medium needs to be regulated as fanaticism is on the rise through it. 

The unimaginable development of information technology should have fostered a more friendly and affectionate environment in society, but this incident indicates that technological advancement did not guarantee the spur of the human spirit.

As society is heading towards the technological supremacy of AI, the book has warned us that there might be knives being made in the jungle of unverified fanatical feed on the internet.

(Acharya is a freelance journalist.)