Author: Randeep Ramesh in Delhi
Publication: Guardian
Date: February 11, 2008
URL: http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,,2255524,00.html
Roy leads fight to stop expulsion of Bangladeshi
accused of insulting Islam
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.
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."
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]."
