Against the odds, Rushdie novel finally becomes a film

A Canadian filmmaker has just completed shooting the first movie adaptation of Salman Rushdie's celebrated novel Midnight's Children – a project that had to be carried out in secrecy in Sri Lanka.

Deepa Mehta chose the location rather than India and Pakistan, where the novel is set, to avoid agitating religious extremists. But even as filming was under way in Colombo, the project was almost derailed when word reached the authorities in Iran, who protested to the Sri Lankan government. Filming was temporarily halted, but restarted after President Mahinda Rajapaksa decided it should proceed.

Midnight's Children, for which Rushdie won the 1981 Booker Prize, examines the history of India leading up to, and after, Partition. The novel has never before been made into a film, apparently at least partly out of concern over the reputation of Rushdie, who in 1989 received a fatwa from the Iranian regime for another novel, The Satanic Verses.

As it was, by shooting scenes in Sri Lanka, the filmmakers hoped to avoid the worst controversies. When Mehta's film Fire was released in India, cinemas were set on fire. Another project was delayed by four years because of protests by Hindu extremists. "He's got the Muslims," Mehta said, referring to the fatwa on Rushdie. "And I've got the Hindus."