Taslima Nasrin: An exiled Bangladeshi author and religious fundamentalism

Ripan Kumar Biswas

Ripan.Biswas@yahoo.com

"Get out of here. Go to Kerala, go to Europe or go to Rajasthan. Do anything but get out
of here. People are trying to kill you," West Bengal police of India recently told to the
Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasrin, who continues to be in "exile" in India since 2002
after fleeing Bangladesh due to threats from radical groups.

Taslima Nasrin, an overtly atheist writer, proclaims herself to be a ‘humanist,’ while

boldly expressing her views about religions, particularly from the perspectives of
women’s rights, which many a faithful does not feel comfortable with, has been living in
exile for 12 years and her Bangladeshi passport stands invalid. Nasrin had to move first to
Sweden after she invoked the ire of fundamentalists in Bangladesh with her book “Lajja”
(Shame) in 1993. She holds a European Union passport issued by the Swedish
government.

Until November 22, 2007, Taslima lived in Kolkata, India, but was forced to leave the
city in a rush, following security concerns raised by a violent agitation by several
Musllim groups in the city that were demanding the cancellation of further extension of
her Indian Visa which will be expired on February 17, 2008. She has now become a
victim of political ping-pong in India, bundled from one city to another in a controversy
critics say has shamed the secular state and CPM-led West Bengal government is using
her as an issue for deflecting public attention from Nandigram.

The very fact that disparate issues like Taslima Nasrin’s continuing residence in Kolkata
and Nandigram were all mixed up in this protest suggests the possibility of
communalisation of identities, where all kinds of unconnected issues are lumped into one
seamless whole to create a singular narrative of community victimization. Any society
that does not manage to diagnose each issue for what it is, and instead gives rein to a
politics of free association, where disparate grievances get lumped into community
narratives is setting itself up for a disaster.

Critics accused the government of India of being "afraid of offending the Islamist street"
while according to the editorial of the Economic Times of India, the controversy
highlights the delicate social faultiness of India, a nation born out of secular ideals 60
years ago but where communal politics still play a huge role. Muslims are India's biggest
minority and account for about 12 percent of the population. In West Bengal, they
represent nearly a third of voters and prop up the left.

Excerpt from her writings like “if any religion allows the persecution of the people of
different faiths, if any religion keeps women in slavery, if any religion keeps people in
ignorance, then I can’t accept that religion” might force Nasrin to leave Bangladesh.

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Nasrin fled Bangladesh for the first time in 1994 when a court said she had deliberately
and maliciously hurt Muslims' religious feelings with her Bengali-language novella
"Lajja" (Shame), which is about riots between Muslims and Hindus. Several of her books
have been banned in India and Bangladesh because they upset hardliner Muslims.

Freedom of expression , a facet which most of us take for granted, airily voicing our
opinions vociferously, stridently, often responsibly one would like to believe but many a
times misusing it vapidly, if not rabidly, is proclaimed as ‘blasphemy’ by Islamic
fundamentalists. Especially if it is a woman whose voice gets heard above the call of the
muezzin and who threatens to expose first hand the horrendous conditions of regression
and dominance she and others such as her are compelled to undergo because of a quirk of
fate.

In 1993, outraged by a series of newspaper columns in which she was critical of the
treatment of women under Islam, including her writing about the execution in 1993 of a
23 years woman at the behest of a local mullah. Declaring the young woman’s second
marriage a violation of Islamic law, the mullah gathered, buried her waist deep in a pit
and blooded her by throwing hundreds of stones to her. Islamic fundamentalists issued a
fatwa and offered a bounty for Taslima’s death.

Fundamentalism has been encouraged by those in power in Bangladesh. First it was the
army, which after coming to power used religion to gain popularity among the masses.
When the so-called democratic parties came to power, they too used the same method to
throttle the opposition. Ironically, in the years when Taslima has been in exile,
Bangladesh has been ruled by two women Prime Ministers, Khaleda Zia and Sheikh
Hasina, but neither appears to have been sympathetic to her plight.

But everyone wonders by observing what the army backed present non political
government of Bangladesh, of which Taslima is a citizen by birth, is going to do about
the issue. The government of Dr. Fakhruddin Ahemd in this case is so far following in the
footsteps of its predecessors: maintaining complete silence.

It has become a trend in Bangladesh to attack writers in such a way. Specially, those who
write against the fundamentalists are being attacked frequently.

Dr Humayun Azad, humanist, freethinker, intellectual, iconoclast, fierce critic of Islam

and the professor of Dhaka University, was attacked critically on February 27, 2004 due
to the publication of his novel about religious groups in Bangladesh who collaborated
with the Pakistani army during the 1971 independence war.

Before the attack, threats were reportedly made against him after the publication of his
book "Pak Sar Zamin Saad Baad" ('the first line of the Pakistani national anthem') and
religious groups had been agitating against the publication of the book and lobbying for
the introduction of a blasphemy law to ban such publications. However, Dr. Azad was

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found dead in his University residence in Munich, Germany on 11 August 2004 which is
still not clear whether his death is normal or not.

Late Shamsur Rahman, who was the leading poet, columnist and journalist in Bangladesh
and was the chairman of a national committee to resist the fundamentalist forces opposed
to independence and democracy, was attacked in January 1999 by a group of Islamic
militants.

In Bangladesh, where the education levels are so disparate, where religion is so

emotionally and passionately held, then if someone has the freedom of speech merging
into the right to offend, he/she ends up provoking people often to violence, sometimes to
death.

Fundamentalists groups in Bangladesh are attacking the writers or secular voices as a

pretext, and that too in such an organized way, to advance their common obscurantist
politics, which eventually aims at setting up of theocratic state in Bangladesh. The recent
arrest and ongoing detention of the cartoonist Arifur Rahman, is without legal basis. It
runs contrary to international norms of human rights as well as the public interest of the
nation to inhibit the free exchange of opinions, even those that may cause offense to
some.

Earlier in 2003, journalist Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury, editor of Dhaka based Weekly
Blitz and editor and chairman of several other printing and electronic media, was arrested
under sedition charges at the Dhaka airport before boarding a flight to Israel where he
was to speak on promoting Muslim-Jewish relations. He was imprisoned under often
deplorable conditions and tortured after angering the government and radicals by warning
about the rise of Islamist terrorism in the country, urging Bangladesh to recognize Israel,
and advocating real interfaith understanding and religious equality.

Freedom of expression is one of the most fundamental rights that individuals enjoy. It is
fundamental to the existence of democracy and the respect of human dignity. Bangladesh
is now under state of emergency and in the absence of freedom of expression, with
suppression of civil society and political activism; writers have become the nation's
pioneers in defending human rights and promoting social change.

To respect democratic norms that ensure freedom of expressions, government in

Bangladesh should make its position clear to the public, at home and abroad about
Taslima’s issue and come forward to pave the way for her to return Bangladesh safely
and provide adequate security to her in Bangladesh.

December 08, 2007, New York

Ripan Kumar Biswas is a freelance writer based in New York