<B>By Deepa BHOOKHUN</B>

I wonder if Paul Bérenger, Maulana Chooramun, Shakeel Mohamed, Sam Lauthan or even Showkatally Soodhun know that, if you want to own a book that local bookstores don?t sell, you can just as easily log on to amazon.com and order the book, pay for it by credit card and have it delivered to your door within a week.

Yes, this is called technology.

In the era of technology, there are no barriers. The concept of prohibited literature becomes anachronistic. Sometimes you don?t even have to buy a book ? or a movie for that matter ? you can just download it and read/watch it online.

Here ends my bit on technology.

But this column is not about technology. It?s about outrage against decency. Those guilty of outrage against decency are the persons mentioned above. I wonder if the police will arrest them for uttering words that offend decent and intelligent people. I guess not; parliamentary immunity means you can talk as much nonsense as you want without any repercussions.

What those men have in common is that they think Salman Rushdie?s ?Satanic verses? should still be banned some 20 years after its publication. Except that the law in Mauritius doesn?t consider this particular book as being ?seditious in character? and so cannot forbid its importation. Thank goodness that common sense (not as common as one would like to think, huh?) still prevails. After all sedition has to do with rebellion against the authority of the State. Religion has nothing to do with it; fortunately for us, unfortunately for some.

Notwithstanding this, the police have decided to check all bookshops in a bid to stop them from selling the book. In one instance, copies of the ?Satanic verses? have been seized because Section 206 of the Criminal code allows the police to do that if there can be an outrage against ?public and religious morality?.

I might add that section 206 of the Criminal code also provides that ?matters of opinion on religious questions, decently expressed or written, shall not be deemed to be an outrage.?

I guess this part has escaped some people?s attention.

I wonder if any of those politicians have read the ?Satanic verses?? It could have taught them a thing or two. The book talks about the inner dilemmas of immigration and the disorientation that happens to people who have left their homes and have moved to a new country and how they are disillusioned by both their culture and the culture of their adopted country and how they mediate between the two.

As a matter of fact, if people could have read the ?Satanic verses?; maybe then we could finally realize that all this talk about outrage and fatwas is just a gratuitous storm in a non-existent teacup.

But when has reason ever won in a debate on religion?