By Dilip Simeon, Delhi

Over the past four months, the Deoband Ulama has contributed to the climate of intolerance and religious bigotry in India. First, by opposing Salman Rushdie's presence at the Jaipur Literature Festival, and now by sabotaging a perfectly legitimate subject for research.

In the first instance they succeeded by riding on the backs of various hooligans disguised as 'Muslim leaders', and now by presenting themselves as the self-appointed representatives of 'hurt sentiment' - that tried and tested weapon of communal politicians of all colours. (Witness the hue and cry over AK Ramanujan's Three Hundred Ramayanas). They want Rushdie’s work to be excluded from bona-fide literary research, even if the research does not explicitly take up The Satanic Verses.