Indian politician P Chidambaram said that The Rajiv Gandhi government should never have banned Salman Rushdie’s book Satanic Verses in 1988.
At the Times LitFest he spoke for openness and tolerance called the ban “wrong.” The Times of India has the scoop:
Chidambaram was minister of state for home in Rajiv’s government when the ban kicked in. “I have no hesitation in saying that the ban was wrong,” he said. When the audience asked him if he felt the same way about the Emergency, Chidambaram said: “Indira Gandhi admitted in 1980 that imposing the Emergency was a mistake.”