EXIT THE AUTHOR
The system of thirty years’ standing has cowed in the face of fantastic, fanatical fury. The moral defeat is the state’s.
ARINDAM GHOSH-DASTIDAR
The Statesman, 25 November
I have no place to go. India is my home and I would like to keep living in this country until I die. ~ Taslima Nasreen
There is a sense of stark irony in Taslima Nasreen’s shift to Jaipur. Just as the Bengal Left had sheltered Qutbuddin Ansari, the Gujarat tailor who had become the icon of the 2002 pogrom, so too did the Rajasthan Right provide refuge to an almost permanently aggrieved feminist writer from Bangladesh. Virtually on landing did the Bharatiya Janata Party’s chief minister, Vasundhara Raje, assure her of round-the-clock security, emerging as a saviour in the process. But after one night in Jaipur, the government has been unnerved by the purported threat of further violence. Taslima’s predicament deepens as she is now reduced to a nowhere person in what they call the National Capital Region.
It is the Communist Party of India (Marxist) that has once again suffered a battering under a state secretary whose foot-in-the-mouth ailment has assumed near-chronic proportions. A day after the fundamentalist fury, Taslima was packed off to Jaipur. Even 48 hours later, there has been no official version on the move. Well may both the party and government ~ rather smugly ~ rest assured that the vote-bank has not been rocked. But the party has decidedly emerged as a bundle of contradictions. Having declared at the height of Wednesday’s violence that Taslima should leave West Bengal “if her continued stay disturbs the state’s peace”, it took Mr Biman Bose barely 12 hours to effect a swingback and plead that “I revise my earlier statement”. In attempting to justify the flip-flop, he could have spared us the knowledge that “the state government doesn’t have the authority to grant or cancel visa and that only the Centre can do this”. His initial bow in the direction of the fundamentalists has doubtless been reinforced by the manner and alacrity with which she has now been shown the door. Despite Mr Bose's somersault, there is little doubt that the government has accorded precedence to the minority card over freedom of speech and expression.
It isn’t exactly clear whether the West Bengal government has acted at the prodding of the Centre. The Chief Minister has been tightlipped since Wednesday as he invariably is in the wake of a controversy. Yet both he and the Centre need to come upfront on a matter of tremendous public import. The authorities would hate to admit as much, but it is pretty much obvious that the government has buckled under fundamentalist pressure. It would be no exaggeration to suggest that the administration has virtually surrendered to the demand of the Islamic fringe who think the Taliban and Al Qaida are jolly good chaps. And who are potentially lethal enough to bring Kolkata to its knees in a couple of hours. Even the assembly Speaker, Mr Hashim Abdul Halim, has gone on record with the statement that Taslima’s stay in the city had “created problems”. Still more alarming are the facts exposed by the Dainik Statesman in the piece titled Byapika Bidai (23 November 2007). A section of the police brass, including the previous Police Commissioner, had reportedly told her to her face that she had become a “security threat” and ought to leave the city. She was even threatened with withdrawal of security. The compulsion is only too perceptible: ahead of the panchayat elections, the government can hardly afford to alienate the minorities further, given the twin disasters over Rizwanur Rehman and Nandigram with a predominantly Muslim peasantry. In a sense, Taslima was in thrall of a bullying police.
The feedback of the Special Branch couldn’t have been so inadequate, after all. Of course, it had erred on the scale and intensity, but the provocation wasn’t wholly unexpected. The Centre’s refusal to renew her visa only served to lend the spark. This is confirmed, if confirmation were needed, by the assertion of the president of the All-India Minority Forum that the “protest” ~ a breathtaking expression of understatement ~ was against Taslima’s prolonged stay in Kolkata. In the manner of Biman Bose, Idris Ali has also effected a turnaround, stoutly denying that the violence was no less a reaction to the Nandigram issue. Double-think runs wild from moment to moment. Both Taslima and Nandigram were very much on the streetfighters' agenda on Wednesday and it has taken the Forum 24 hours to realise the thoughtlessly reckless disconnect.
To an extent, the violence was arguably an offshoot of the intra-community struggle for prominence, notably between Ali and Sidiqullah Chaudhry of the Jamait Ulema-e-Bengal, the former shrilling for Taslima’s exit and the latter buttressing the interests of the Nandigram peasant. This becomes fairly obvious from the appeal issued by at least one imam to both sides not to merge the two wholly unrelated issues. The mayhem was centred around an address in that amorphous locality referred to as south of Park Street, not for the cause of the landless or/and homeless in the backwaters of Purba Medinipur.
The sponsors of the demonstration must have known that they were playing with fire for dubious political ends. And the possibility of Ali ~ who represents the Congress with his own brand of machismo ~ facing party action is substantial. Secularism or religious tolerance or for that matter literary dissent does not mean putting up with calculated irresponsibility. It is fervently to be hoped that sense
will yet prevail upon men and organisations who place politics above humanity.
The lumpen vandalism, therefore, falls into a pattern confirming the government’s perception that an individual had become a security threat. Indubitably was the violence a siren call for action against Taslima, and for the government to be decisive. In effect the system has been cowed. Verily has it served to hasten her exit.
That forced exit in burqa and without police escort is arguably a logical corollary of the Marxist government's earlier ban on her book, Dwikhandito. The army may have restored order over a four kilometre radius, a fairly routine task one should imagine for the police but which proved to be hopelessly beyond its wherewithal. Eloquent protestations on the freedom of expression and liberal thought will now ring hollow. As must be the liberal pretensions of Kolkata and the state’s culturally virile Chief Minister. Taslima's novel was banned by his dispensation, after all.
The city owes a collective salute to Johnny Gurkha for having come to its rescue. Nonetheless, the system of thirty years’ standing has cowed in the face of fantastic, fanatical fury. The moral defeat is the state’s as it is for Taslima Nasreen.
The writer is Assistant Editor, The Statesman
ARINDAM GHOSH-DASTIDAR
The Statesman, 25 November
I have no place to go. India is my home and I would like to keep living in this country until I die. ~ Taslima Nasreen
There is a sense of stark irony in Taslima Nasreen’s shift to Jaipur. Just as the Bengal Left had sheltered Qutbuddin Ansari, the Gujarat tailor who had become the icon of the 2002 pogrom, so too did the Rajasthan Right provide refuge to an almost permanently aggrieved feminist writer from Bangladesh. Virtually on landing did the Bharatiya Janata Party’s chief minister, Vasundhara Raje, assure her of round-the-clock security, emerging as a saviour in the process. But after one night in Jaipur, the government has been unnerved by the purported threat of further violence. Taslima’s predicament deepens as she is now reduced to a nowhere person in what they call the National Capital Region.
It is the Communist Party of India (Marxist) that has once again suffered a battering under a state secretary whose foot-in-the-mouth ailment has assumed near-chronic proportions. A day after the fundamentalist fury, Taslima was packed off to Jaipur. Even 48 hours later, there has been no official version on the move. Well may both the party and government ~ rather smugly ~ rest assured that the vote-bank has not been rocked. But the party has decidedly emerged as a bundle of contradictions. Having declared at the height of Wednesday’s violence that Taslima should leave West Bengal “if her continued stay disturbs the state’s peace”, it took Mr Biman Bose barely 12 hours to effect a swingback and plead that “I revise my earlier statement”. In attempting to justify the flip-flop, he could have spared us the knowledge that “the state government doesn’t have the authority to grant or cancel visa and that only the Centre can do this”. His initial bow in the direction of the fundamentalists has doubtless been reinforced by the manner and alacrity with which she has now been shown the door. Despite Mr Bose's somersault, there is little doubt that the government has accorded precedence to the minority card over freedom of speech and expression.
It isn’t exactly clear whether the West Bengal government has acted at the prodding of the Centre. The Chief Minister has been tightlipped since Wednesday as he invariably is in the wake of a controversy. Yet both he and the Centre need to come upfront on a matter of tremendous public import. The authorities would hate to admit as much, but it is pretty much obvious that the government has buckled under fundamentalist pressure. It would be no exaggeration to suggest that the administration has virtually surrendered to the demand of the Islamic fringe who think the Taliban and Al Qaida are jolly good chaps. And who are potentially lethal enough to bring Kolkata to its knees in a couple of hours. Even the assembly Speaker, Mr Hashim Abdul Halim, has gone on record with the statement that Taslima’s stay in the city had “created problems”. Still more alarming are the facts exposed by the Dainik Statesman in the piece titled Byapika Bidai (23 November 2007). A section of the police brass, including the previous Police Commissioner, had reportedly told her to her face that she had become a “security threat” and ought to leave the city. She was even threatened with withdrawal of security. The compulsion is only too perceptible: ahead of the panchayat elections, the government can hardly afford to alienate the minorities further, given the twin disasters over Rizwanur Rehman and Nandigram with a predominantly Muslim peasantry. In a sense, Taslima was in thrall of a bullying police.
The feedback of the Special Branch couldn’t have been so inadequate, after all. Of course, it had erred on the scale and intensity, but the provocation wasn’t wholly unexpected. The Centre’s refusal to renew her visa only served to lend the spark. This is confirmed, if confirmation were needed, by the assertion of the president of the All-India Minority Forum that the “protest” ~ a breathtaking expression of understatement ~ was against Taslima’s prolonged stay in Kolkata. In the manner of Biman Bose, Idris Ali has also effected a turnaround, stoutly denying that the violence was no less a reaction to the Nandigram issue. Double-think runs wild from moment to moment. Both Taslima and Nandigram were very much on the streetfighters' agenda on Wednesday and it has taken the Forum 24 hours to realise the thoughtlessly reckless disconnect.
To an extent, the violence was arguably an offshoot of the intra-community struggle for prominence, notably between Ali and Sidiqullah Chaudhry of the Jamait Ulema-e-Bengal, the former shrilling for Taslima’s exit and the latter buttressing the interests of the Nandigram peasant. This becomes fairly obvious from the appeal issued by at least one imam to both sides not to merge the two wholly unrelated issues. The mayhem was centred around an address in that amorphous locality referred to as south of Park Street, not for the cause of the landless or/and homeless in the backwaters of Purba Medinipur.
The sponsors of the demonstration must have known that they were playing with fire for dubious political ends. And the possibility of Ali ~ who represents the Congress with his own brand of machismo ~ facing party action is substantial. Secularism or religious tolerance or for that matter literary dissent does not mean putting up with calculated irresponsibility. It is fervently to be hoped that sense
will yet prevail upon men and organisations who place politics above humanity.
The lumpen vandalism, therefore, falls into a pattern confirming the government’s perception that an individual had become a security threat. Indubitably was the violence a siren call for action against Taslima, and for the government to be decisive. In effect the system has been cowed. Verily has it served to hasten her exit.
That forced exit in burqa and without police escort is arguably a logical corollary of the Marxist government's earlier ban on her book, Dwikhandito. The army may have restored order over a four kilometre radius, a fairly routine task one should imagine for the police but which proved to be hopelessly beyond its wherewithal. Eloquent protestations on the freedom of expression and liberal thought will now ring hollow. As must be the liberal pretensions of Kolkata and the state’s culturally virile Chief Minister. Taslima's novel was banned by his dispensation, after all.
The city owes a collective salute to Johnny Gurkha for having come to its rescue. Nonetheless, the system of thirty years’ standing has cowed in the face of fantastic, fanatical fury. The moral defeat is the state’s as it is for Taslima Nasreen.
The writer is Assistant Editor, The Statesman
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