That a book banned 33 years ago and its author can still stoke controversy and leave the organisers of a literary festival with their knickers in a twist, is astounding. But it’s happened: author Salman Rushdie has stayed away from the Jaipur litfest fearing for his life and the festival organisers have packed off four writers, who had read from his book The Satanic Verses, over the weekend.This is ridiculous. Even more ridiculous is the continuation of the ban on importing and selling copies of the Verses, which came into effect in October 1989. At the time, the Rajiv Gandhi administration was reeling under allegations of bribery in the Bofors gun deal and the ban was one of its last executive decisions, before elections in November.It was justified by saying that passages in the book could be used by rabble-rousers to start communal riots, an argument that could be easily made about, say, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. What prevents associations of vertically-challenged individuals from laying siege to Raisina Hill to protest the way they’re portrayed in the story?The Disney version , which figures Sneezy, Grumpy and Dopey, could be held to be even more politically incorrect. Any book or text can be offensive to some curmudgeon. It doesn’t mean that we should ban them. The Verses is among the few books banned by New Delhi. State governments have a more terrible record. Recently, Maharashtra banned James Laine’s historical study of Shivaji and Bombay University took Rohinton’s Mistry’s Such a Long Journey off its curriculum after a Shiv Sena protest.In 2003, Bengal’s then-communist government banned Taslima Nasrin’s Dwikhondito. Last year, the Gujarat government banned Joseph Lelyveld’s biography on Gandhi. But banning books is as futile as trying to ban thought. As long as people think, thoughts will find expression. Today, when Germany is debating whether to reprint Hitler’s easily-downloadable Mein Kampf, India must rethink its book-banning ways. If India aspires to be a liberal democracy, it must defend the right to free speech over the right to feel offended at the drop of a hat.