Going. Not Going. Going. After weeks of speculation, Salman Rushdie finally pulled out of the Jaipur Literary festival over fears that he is being targeted by assassins from the Mumbai underworld.

Via Hindu: “I have been informed by Intelligence Bureau sources in Maharashtra and Rajasthan that paid assassins from the Mumbai underworld may be on their way to Jaipur to eliminate me. …It would be irresponsible of me to come to the Festival in such circumstances; irresponsible to my family, to the festival audience, and to my fellow writers. I will therefore not travel to Jaipur as planned,” Mr. Rushdie said in a statement read out by the Festival’s producer Sanjoy Roy.

Here is Salman Rushdie in his own words in Vanity Fair describing how and why his friend Christopher Hitchens stood by him after Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini declared a fatwa calling for his death in 1989.

He, too, saw that the attack on The Satanic Verses was not an isolated occurrence, that, across the Muslim world, writers and journalists and artists were being accused of the same crimes—blasphemy, heresy, apostasy, and their modern-day associates, “insult” and “offense.” And he intuited that beyond this intellectual assault lay the possibility of an attack on a broader front. He quoted Heine to me: Where they burn books they will afterward burn people. (And reminded me, with his profound sense of irony, that Heine’s line, in his play Almansor, had referred to the burning of the Koran.) And on September 11, 2001, he, and all of us, understood that what had begun with a book burning in Bradford, Yorkshire, had now burst upon the whole world’s consciousness in the form of those tragically burning buildings.

During the campaign against the fatwa, the British government and various human-rights groups pressed the case for a visit by me to the Clinton White House, to demonstrate the strength of the new administration’s support for the cause. [...]

(On that visit to D.C., I stayed in the Hitchens apartment, and he was afterward warned by a State Department spook that my having been his houseguest may have drawn the danger toward him; maybe it would be a good idea if he moved house? He remained contemptuously unmoved.)

Are we to believe that a government that successfully pulled off such complex events under the shadow of terrorist threats as the Commonwealth Games, the 2001 Cricket World Cup, and an Obama state visit could not protect a writer and the attendees of a literary festival? The same writer who has been visiting India regularly since the fatwa, and even the same literary festival in 2007? What a bunch of baloney. The simple fact is that there is an election coming up in Uttar Pradesh and the Congress party does not want to ruffle any feathers in the Muslim community.

It’s a sad day for democracy in India. And a sadder day that Hitchens is not around to excoriate the whole lot of them…including Rushdie.

And here’s why….

If you agree, please take action here.

Amidst the conflicts, despair and poverty, there is one important thing to celebrate today, the 64th Independence Day – the awakening of the Indian people to dealing with corruption.

The full text of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s speech on this day is here.

2,995 words in the speech represented in the cloud below.

Without a doubt, Anna Hazare’s fast-unto-death protest is now a full-fledged citizens movement, with Bollywood and political parties thrown in for good measure. Something good will come out of it. The pressure on the government is coming from all quarters because of one and only one reason – the consequences of not meeting Hazare’s demands are just too drastic.

Meanwhile another fast-unto-death protest has gone largely unnoticed for the past 11 years. In the year 2000 a young 28-year old woman declared her protest to not eat food or drink water. She did so because security forces brutally gunned down 10 civilians standing at a bus stop in Manipur. The security forces were operating under the rights granted them by the 1958 Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act (AFSPA), a draconian act that gives them the powers to:

• “Fire upon or otherwise use force, even to the causing of death, against any person who is acting in contravention of any law” against “assembly of five or more persons” or possession of deadly weapons.
• To arrest without a warrant and with the use of “necessary” force anyone who has committed certain offenses or is suspected of having done so
• To enter and search any premise in order to make such arrests.

Irom Chanu Sharmila is now 39 years old. She is being force fed through a nasal tube at a Government hospital. In the 11 years since her protest began she gets in the news for two reasons, an arrest and/or winning an award for her determination.

Hers is a protest that never garnered the support that Hazare’s movement is getting. Corruption is an evil that must be rooted out of India. Irom Chanu Sharmila’s protest fights for an as- if not more important and fundamental human right – that no citizen of a democratic country should have to die at the hands of its government who is there to protect and serve them.

Irom Chand Sharmila - social and political activist on fast for 11 years in India.

Yesterday Paul Beckett, the South Asia bureau chief of the Wall St Journal snarkily wondered if hunger strikes work in a piece titled ‘Another Hunger Strike? Yawn’

Social activist Anna Hazare is reportedly starting such a fast this morning to push civil society’s involvement in the formation of the anti-corruption ombudsman bill in Parliament. I have no reason not to take Mr. Hazare at his word. He has won the Padma Shri award, one of India’s highest civilian awards. But do you think he is really going to go through with this even if the government ignores his demands?

Mr. Beckett has his answer. Anna Hazare has in fact gone through with it. Thousands of Indians are rallying in support of Hazare. Not just on the streets of Delhi, but around the country and around the world. Thousands of young Indians have listened to Hazare’s call on Facebook and Twitter.

Yes Mr. Beckett hunger strikes do work. With perfect timing, a cause that has enraged millions of Indians, a supportive media, and led by a man whose courage and integrity are a beacon in the cesspool of corrupt politicians, hunger strikes work.

As of this morning Union Minister Sharad Pawar has quit the GoM (group of ministers) tackling a solution to corruption. Parasitic politicians are even losing the battle of hogging some Hazare’s spotlight.