In cricket, I root for India: Rushdie

NEW DELHI: Internationally renowned author Salman Rushdie says his personal identity remains wedded to India and he always roots for the Indian team's win in a cricket match.

The Mumbai-born author who is in India to speak at the Virasat literary festival in Jaipur told a TV news channel that coming back to this country was still special.

"For me it's always, you know, it's like drinking at the well. Every so often you have to come to the well to drink."

And was Karachi in Pakistan, where his parents migrated to in the 1960s, also part of his personal identity? "Not really, I know which side I am on, in the cricket test. It's always India," said the author.

Asked if it still offended him that India had been the first country in the world to ban his controversial Satanic Verses, he replied, "Not offensive. It's just wrong. But I'm sure you can get a copy easily if you wish to!"

Rushdie believed that both militants and the Indian Army have contributed to the unhappiness of the people of Kashmir - a place that forms the backdrop of his Booker winner Midnight's Children as well as the latest Shalimar the Clown.

"Well, I think that now there is a terrible amount of oppression of Kashmiri Muslims by this other kind of Islam. That's important, you know. But before that and still there was terrible misbehaviour by members of the Indian armed forces and you know that's a sad thing to say but, you know, it's true," he said.