Oh, Taslima



This blog, keeping with my track record, comes a week late. Earlier, the e-learning projects exhausted me and prevented me from keeping my blog up to date. Now my assignments are keeping me too busy to do the same.

Excuses aside, here I am. This time, taking up the cause of Taslima Nasrin.

Here’s an update for the late comers. Tasleem Nasreen is a Bengali writer who started as a poet and later moved to novels. Trained as a physician, she also wrote columns for newspapers and magazines about women’s oppression in Islam that became quite controversial. The fundamentalists kept the pressure on her and later, declared a fatwa, which meant a price for her head. The Bangladesh government forced her to resign her job as a doctor and asked her to quit writing. Her novel Lajja was banned in Bangladesh and subsequently became a bestseller everywhere else. The government confiscated her passport and declared an arrest warrant. She went into hiding while more Islamic groups set more prices on her head. The international intervention led to the recall of her warrant but she had to leave the country.



Even though several Western European countries offered her asylum, Taslima Nasrin decided to take refuge in India. She loved the Bengali culture and felt at home in Kolkata. She left Bangladesh behind but not Islamic Fundamentalism. It chased her and the domestic extremist groups began launching their agitations.

The Indian government became reluctant to offer her an official asylum. The reason was stated as their disinclination to offend Bangladesh but the real reason was they did not want to ‘hurt’ the Muslims in India. The pseudo-secular Congress government in the centre and the Left in West Bengal who are forever ready to lick the boots of Imams in order to proclaim their ‘secularism’ continued to keep her fate in hanging. Meanwhile, during a book release function in Hyderabad, a few Muslim MLAs tried to assault her. This was captured live by the media present and broadcasted all over. Not a single party came to condemn it.



She returned to West Bengal but the Islamic groups in the state decided to intensify the stir. Fearing violence, West Bengal government, uncannily like what Bangladesh did, forced Taslima to leave the state rather than contain the extremist groups.

Last news, Taslima is being made to stay indefinitely in the official office of Rajastan in New Delhi. The Railway Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav had openly proclaimed that Taslima should stop writing ‘religiously offensive books’ and apologise to Muslims. I really wonder if he has ever read a single paragraph written by her.

The central government are still very tight-lipped about this issue and not so surprisingly so are the Indian media. I must add a caveat that I haven’t been reading any Indian publications and what ever I read from the Internet has not been reassuring.

I wonder why the government are not speaking about it. The same government and the media who waxed who eloquently about the arrest warrant of Fine Arts student Chandramohan for portraying erotic Hindu paintings, condemned the vandalism of Hindutva groups’ at M F Hussain’s gallery for painting the Goddess Sarawathy nude.

In those occasions, they spoke aggressively about the freedom of expression, art for the sake of art and humanism over religion. None of such claims are being made about Taslima now.

While I’m writing all this, I must also state that I am not supporting the arrest of Chandramohan or the vandalism against M F Hussain. I am all for art for the sake or art and if some one does not like Saraswathy being painted nude, they should avoid going to the exhibition and perhaps write criticising the artist. If the self-appointed culture police attempt to create unrest, they should be contained with an iron-fist. The Hindutva groups that vandalise M F Hussain’s gallery or Archies showrooms on Valentine’s Day should be treated as terrorists and receive the same legal status.

My question comes only when all these institutions turn silent with respect to freedom of expression against Islam. I can understand Bangladesh banning Taslima’s books and deporting her. I cannot understand this when India do it because, last heard, it is still a secular democratic republic.

The Islamic extremist groups can stop a screening of a movie that they don’t like (Bombay), ban a book that offends their sentiments (Satanic Verses), bend the constitution to support their atrocities that is supposedly licensed by their religion (Shah-Bano) and can announce crazy fatwas (Imrana). All this will go unnoticed and often even receive the government backing.

This cannot go on and must stop. In an earlier blog on Glasgow bombing, I urged the moderate Muslims all over the world the raise their voice against the rising Islamic fundamentalism. I’m now urging all the Indian Muslims to rise to defend India. India is in a serious danger of being sabotaged by the Islamic terrorism on the social side and extremism on the cultural side. Unfortunately this extremism is being backed blatantly and shamelessly by the Indian government. If the majority moderate Muslims in India keep quiet about it, no amount of Sachar committee reports will help them alleviate their woes.

I want to hear the voice of the moderate Muslims in support of Taslima. In support of pluralism, multi-culturalism and secularism.

And in support of humanism.