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Nov 23, 2008 |
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Arundhati Roy leads fight to stop expulsion of Bangladeshi feminist writer Taslima Nasrin, accused of insulting Islam
RANDEEP RAMESH in Delhi
LEADING FIGURES from Indian literature, academia and the law announced a campaign last night to stop an exiled Bangladeshi author, Taslima Nasrin, who has been accused of insulting Islam, from being expelled from India.
PROTEST: Award winning Arundhati Roy organise protest from expelling exiled Bangladeshi feminist writer Taslima Nasrin
Though ministers have given assurances she would be allowed to remain, officials have yet to extend her visa, which expires at the end of the week.
In an open letter drafted by the Booker prizewinner Arundhati Roy, the dozens of public figures called for Nasrin to be given a resident's permit or citizenship. They said they had become alarmed at "India projecting itself as a modern democracy while there is being mounted a concerted assault on the right to free speech".
"We want to protect freedom of speech as a cornerstone of democracy," said Roy. "We don't all necessarily agree with everything [Nasrin] has written. But in a democracy we should defend her right to say it. At the moment Delhi is hosting the World Book Fair, but we are imprisoning writers. It is bizarre."
PROTEST: Muslims burn an effigy of author Taslima Nasrin during protests in Kolkata, India.
Photo: Jayanta Shaw/Reuters
Nasrin, who has lived in India since 2000, has been targeted by Muslims in the past six months over her autobiography, Dwi-Khandita, where she commented on the relationship the prophet Muhammad had with his dozen wives and also said that the Qur'an had advised against friendships with non-Muslims. The book was recalled and the passages deleted but Muslims say copies are still in circulation, and the protests have continued. The author was taken into protective custody in November after riots in Kolkata, where she lived.
Since then she has been under virtual house arrest at an undisclosed location in Delhi, unable to meet anyone and guarded by officials. She is seen as an embarrassment by the government in a year of state elections where the Muslim vote is crucial, and ministers have taken to playing down her plight.
Last month, the government turned down France's proposal to present Nasrin with the Simone de Beauvoir literary award in Delhi during a visit by the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy. "[The Indian foreign ministry] said I could go to France to collect the award but I am afraid they will not let me back into the country," Nasrin said by phone from the Delhi flat.
The foreign ministry has said that the constitution guarantees freedom of expression only to citizens. Nasrin, say officials, is a "guest" in the country.
Muslim intellectuals say the real problem is the "sexual nature" of her work. "It is reprehensible what she has written," said Zafarul-Islam Khan, editor of the Milli Gazette, an influential newspaper for Indian Muslims. "Really this woman has the ability to live in London or New York and she should go. Why is the Indian government paying so much money to keep her here?"
In 1992, when Nasrin won a Bengali-language literary award for her book Lajja (Shame), which looked sympathetically at the plight of Hindus attacked by Muslims in Bangladesh, bookshops were burned in Bangladesh, a Muslim-majority nation. Months later she was the recipient of a fatwa proclaiming a death sentence. Soon afterwards an interview was published in which Nasrin appeared to call for the revision of the Qur'an, an article she says misquoted her. The Bangladesh government issued a warrant for her arrest. She fled to Sweden.
Nasrin said she was surprised to have been "persecuted in India as I was in Bangladesh ... A deportation today, then a ban tomorrow. After that what? An execution? All I want to do is live peacefully in this country. I have nowhere else to go."
Extract: From Nasrin's autobiography:
Muhammad's friends used to look at this beautiful [wife] Ayesha and that made Muhammad jealous. So he made his wives stay behind curtains and then made a law for the women to cover their bodies with extra clothes. It is said women are much respected in Islam. This is an example of such respect towards women! Allah's voice comes down from across the seventh heaven: "Man has the right to rule women, because Allah has created man as superior to woman and man spends his wealth [on them]." #
First published in The Guardian, London, Britain, Monday February 11, 2008
Note: View express in the article is exclusively of the author and not of DurDesh.net |
| Posted by : Editor on Tuesday, February 12, 2008 - 01:26 PM EST |
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