The four writers who read extracts from The Satanic Verses last Friday left the Jaipur Literature Festival (JLF) after organisers presented them with a stark choice: either the festival shuts down and you run from one court to another, or you stop tweeting, lie low and “preferably” leave town. This came after organisers Sanjoy Roy, William Dalrymple and Namita Gokhale got them to sign an undertaking distancing the festival from their symbolic protest against the banning of the book and the absence of its author Salman Rushdie.