Taslima and the Bengali literati
Bikas Basu
The Statesman, 2 December
It’s not difficult to see that West Bengal’s present Left Front government considers Taslima Nasreen’s hasty exit from Kolkata “a good riddance”. The government’s role in the affair, both overt and covert, though not unexpected, is worth analysing. To sum it up in one word, the reason why she had to go was ~ vote. It is a truth, acknowledged across the country, that to stay in power here one cannot ignore the minority votebank (27 per cent of the total electorate).
Another unpleasant but more or less uncontested truth is that the votebank in question is not as a whole as it used to be after Nandigram and the murky events surrounding the death of Rizwanur Rehman. So, the question of giving asylum to a writer who was a foreigner (so what if her humanism and secular stance are exemplary?) at the cost of losing precious votes does not arise.
There is nothing much to discuss on the issue of Nasreen vis-a-vis the state government. We are aware of the government’s political compulsions. It was because of these constraints that the state government was forced to ban Dwikhandito (Split), a volume of her autobiography. The ban had been set aside after a court ruling. As a minor writer who lives and works in this state, I feel for Nasreen.
After Nasreen was packed off to Rajasthan following mob outrage demanding her ouster and given temporary asylum, courtesy the Rajasthan government, Sunil Gangopadhyay, Bengal’s celebrity litterateur, told a TV channel: “Taslima is helpless”. How safe and naïve a comment to make in response to a development that signifies an existential crisis for writers! I would like to ask if the writers and intellectuals of this state have taken any effective step that would end the state of helplessness that an honest and intrepid writer like Nasreen is in.
The spontaneous participation of writers and intellectuals in the mahamichhil to protest against the massacre and rampage at Nandigram made an impact. At least, it made the rulers realise that lawlessness cannot prevail at all times and that justice will catch up. If the men who run this state were not so shameless, we would have a more civil administration by now.
The mockery of democracy in Nandigram warranted a protest rally as huge as it got. It’s a grave issue. One can, at least, hope that the crisis at Nandigram will, eventually, be resolved. The fundamentalist rage and attack on Nasreen is being sustained over the years. It is free speech that is under threat here, it has been made a victim of orthodox beliefs and prejudice. It’s a trend that has surfaced time and again, in different forms. A more sustained campaign against such misdirected fundamentalist anger was perhaps the need of the hour. But most of the intellectuals in West Bengal seem to have done their bit by giving television bytes. Does the well-thought-out silence and inaction on the part of her fellow writers surprise Nasreen? Probably not. When her book Dwikhandito banned, after the chief minister had supposedly talked it over with 40 intellectuals who endorsed the decision, Nasreen had probably sensed a class difference between herself and her fellow writers on this side of the border. She did not really belong to the charmed circle. (Immediately after she chose to set up home in Kolkata, I wrote to her that her dreams may soon come to nought. Dwikhandito was banned in the state soon afterwards.)
Not too many writers on this side of the border have the kind of honesty and courage that Nasreen has shown. A novel like Fera (The Return) ought to have been written by a writer who had experience of migrating from East Bengal to West. But, apparently, few of them have the honesty, courage and respect for truth, that Nasreen has. A lot of writing by present-day writers has been translated from Bengali to English and other European languages, but none had an impact across the world as big as Nasreen’s.
The reason was because these writers did not write with the kind of conviction that Nasreen did. I do not know of any writer in Bengali who has written anything as incisive and brilliant as Salman Rushdie’s The Prophet’s Hair. A super blend of fantasy and satire, the story is an artistic critique of religious bias and blind faith that unfolds in the few days between the imaginary disappearance and return of the Prophet’s lock from the Hazratbal shrine. It takes a gutsy writer to attempt the unsparing and powerful criticism of Islamic fundamentalism of Nasreen or Rushdie. No present-day writer in the Bengali language has dared so far.
The Bengali intelligentsia is practically rather insensitive when it comes to freedom of expression. In the span of a few years, Cuba was twice the focal theme country at the Kolkata Book Fair, the same country where books have to be approved by the government to be published. It didn’t seem to bother any of the litterateurs here. No one said a word. It’s a bit foolhardy to expect these writers to now stand by the exiled writer and make sure that she is brought back with appropriate security arrangements.
They seem content with paying lip service to her. Nasreen was perhaps mistaken here. She thought she was safe in a land where people spoke her own language. But this is a different Bengal, miles away from what Rabindranath Tagore called, “Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high.” Nasreen’s literary “friends” would rather follow what the poet Sankha Ghosh once mockingly called, “Line-ei chhilam Baba. (I am toeing your line, Boss.)”
Let me share an example. The last time Nasreen was physically attacked by the Islamic fundamentalists in Hyderabad, the poet Subodh Sarkar told a TV channel, “Taslima is free to live in India. But let her be shanto (calm) while she is here.” In other words, be a good girl while you are in India. Nasreen is determined not to give up being bad. She will keep writing what she believes is true. Let Sarkar continue to be “good”, “proper” and “politically correct” when he is writing, Nasreen is incapable of such correctness. The secular establishment, comprising secular snobs of West Bengal, are at a loss when it comes to Nasreen.
While the author, a relentless crusader of human rights, cutting across race and religion, feels a free discussion of Islam is warranted, even indispensable, her fellow intellectuals on this side of the border see it as taboo, or, as they would put it, “sensitive matter”. Their support towards Nasreen is not unconditional or at the cost of offending the Islamists.
During the time Nasreen had found asylum in Europe, she would often touch down on Kolkata just to breathe and feel the Bengali language. This was compensation for not being able to visit her home in Bangladesh. Like her Hindu heroine in Fera, there was no way she could set foot on her homeland. That’s when a heavyweight intellectual from West Bengal cautioned her, “Don’t come here so often.” Is the West Bengal government so weak that it cannot protect a writer from Islamic fundamentalists?
Immediately after Nasreen was hounded out of her country following the controversial Lajja (Shame), Annadashankar Roy, the revered thinker and writer, had told her, “Keep writing about women’s emancipation; that’s not against Islam”.
While she is writing on women’s issues, if Nasreen is constrained by not being able to say a word against Islam, who is she up against, after all? She has been vocal in running down the Hindu fundamentalist practices that warranted criticism but why must she draw back while critiquing Islamic fundamentalism?
It looks like Nasreen’s time in India is running out. And that undesirable eventuality ~ a whole-hearted humanist’s exit from a land which she wanted to adopt as her own ~ will be a matter of shame for us, Indians. Nobody except the politicians and intellectuals who want to play it safe are keen to see her go. Her harassment in this country is reprehensible. We should have honoured this brave and sensitive writer with a Deshikottama award, not shut the door on her face.
Evidently, the minds of Bengali intellectuals are not without fear any more, as Rabindranath Tagore had envisaged. Will they be able to hold their heads high ever again?
(The author is a writer of cultural essays and fiction.)
The Statesman, 2 December
It’s not difficult to see that West Bengal’s present Left Front government considers Taslima Nasreen’s hasty exit from Kolkata “a good riddance”. The government’s role in the affair, both overt and covert, though not unexpected, is worth analysing. To sum it up in one word, the reason why she had to go was ~ vote. It is a truth, acknowledged across the country, that to stay in power here one cannot ignore the minority votebank (27 per cent of the total electorate).
Another unpleasant but more or less uncontested truth is that the votebank in question is not as a whole as it used to be after Nandigram and the murky events surrounding the death of Rizwanur Rehman. So, the question of giving asylum to a writer who was a foreigner (so what if her humanism and secular stance are exemplary?) at the cost of losing precious votes does not arise.
There is nothing much to discuss on the issue of Nasreen vis-a-vis the state government. We are aware of the government’s political compulsions. It was because of these constraints that the state government was forced to ban Dwikhandito (Split), a volume of her autobiography. The ban had been set aside after a court ruling. As a minor writer who lives and works in this state, I feel for Nasreen.
After Nasreen was packed off to Rajasthan following mob outrage demanding her ouster and given temporary asylum, courtesy the Rajasthan government, Sunil Gangopadhyay, Bengal’s celebrity litterateur, told a TV channel: “Taslima is helpless”. How safe and naïve a comment to make in response to a development that signifies an existential crisis for writers! I would like to ask if the writers and intellectuals of this state have taken any effective step that would end the state of helplessness that an honest and intrepid writer like Nasreen is in.
The spontaneous participation of writers and intellectuals in the mahamichhil to protest against the massacre and rampage at Nandigram made an impact. At least, it made the rulers realise that lawlessness cannot prevail at all times and that justice will catch up. If the men who run this state were not so shameless, we would have a more civil administration by now.
The mockery of democracy in Nandigram warranted a protest rally as huge as it got. It’s a grave issue. One can, at least, hope that the crisis at Nandigram will, eventually, be resolved. The fundamentalist rage and attack on Nasreen is being sustained over the years. It is free speech that is under threat here, it has been made a victim of orthodox beliefs and prejudice. It’s a trend that has surfaced time and again, in different forms. A more sustained campaign against such misdirected fundamentalist anger was perhaps the need of the hour. But most of the intellectuals in West Bengal seem to have done their bit by giving television bytes. Does the well-thought-out silence and inaction on the part of her fellow writers surprise Nasreen? Probably not. When her book Dwikhandito banned, after the chief minister had supposedly talked it over with 40 intellectuals who endorsed the decision, Nasreen had probably sensed a class difference between herself and her fellow writers on this side of the border. She did not really belong to the charmed circle. (Immediately after she chose to set up home in Kolkata, I wrote to her that her dreams may soon come to nought. Dwikhandito was banned in the state soon afterwards.)
Not too many writers on this side of the border have the kind of honesty and courage that Nasreen has shown. A novel like Fera (The Return) ought to have been written by a writer who had experience of migrating from East Bengal to West. But, apparently, few of them have the honesty, courage and respect for truth, that Nasreen has. A lot of writing by present-day writers has been translated from Bengali to English and other European languages, but none had an impact across the world as big as Nasreen’s.
The reason was because these writers did not write with the kind of conviction that Nasreen did. I do not know of any writer in Bengali who has written anything as incisive and brilliant as Salman Rushdie’s The Prophet’s Hair. A super blend of fantasy and satire, the story is an artistic critique of religious bias and blind faith that unfolds in the few days between the imaginary disappearance and return of the Prophet’s lock from the Hazratbal shrine. It takes a gutsy writer to attempt the unsparing and powerful criticism of Islamic fundamentalism of Nasreen or Rushdie. No present-day writer in the Bengali language has dared so far.
The Bengali intelligentsia is practically rather insensitive when it comes to freedom of expression. In the span of a few years, Cuba was twice the focal theme country at the Kolkata Book Fair, the same country where books have to be approved by the government to be published. It didn’t seem to bother any of the litterateurs here. No one said a word. It’s a bit foolhardy to expect these writers to now stand by the exiled writer and make sure that she is brought back with appropriate security arrangements.
They seem content with paying lip service to her. Nasreen was perhaps mistaken here. She thought she was safe in a land where people spoke her own language. But this is a different Bengal, miles away from what Rabindranath Tagore called, “Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high.” Nasreen’s literary “friends” would rather follow what the poet Sankha Ghosh once mockingly called, “Line-ei chhilam Baba. (I am toeing your line, Boss.)”
Let me share an example. The last time Nasreen was physically attacked by the Islamic fundamentalists in Hyderabad, the poet Subodh Sarkar told a TV channel, “Taslima is free to live in India. But let her be shanto (calm) while she is here.” In other words, be a good girl while you are in India. Nasreen is determined not to give up being bad. She will keep writing what she believes is true. Let Sarkar continue to be “good”, “proper” and “politically correct” when he is writing, Nasreen is incapable of such correctness. The secular establishment, comprising secular snobs of West Bengal, are at a loss when it comes to Nasreen.
While the author, a relentless crusader of human rights, cutting across race and religion, feels a free discussion of Islam is warranted, even indispensable, her fellow intellectuals on this side of the border see it as taboo, or, as they would put it, “sensitive matter”. Their support towards Nasreen is not unconditional or at the cost of offending the Islamists.
During the time Nasreen had found asylum in Europe, she would often touch down on Kolkata just to breathe and feel the Bengali language. This was compensation for not being able to visit her home in Bangladesh. Like her Hindu heroine in Fera, there was no way she could set foot on her homeland. That’s when a heavyweight intellectual from West Bengal cautioned her, “Don’t come here so often.” Is the West Bengal government so weak that it cannot protect a writer from Islamic fundamentalists?
Immediately after Nasreen was hounded out of her country following the controversial Lajja (Shame), Annadashankar Roy, the revered thinker and writer, had told her, “Keep writing about women’s emancipation; that’s not against Islam”.
While she is writing on women’s issues, if Nasreen is constrained by not being able to say a word against Islam, who is she up against, after all? She has been vocal in running down the Hindu fundamentalist practices that warranted criticism but why must she draw back while critiquing Islamic fundamentalism?
It looks like Nasreen’s time in India is running out. And that undesirable eventuality ~ a whole-hearted humanist’s exit from a land which she wanted to adopt as her own ~ will be a matter of shame for us, Indians. Nobody except the politicians and intellectuals who want to play it safe are keen to see her go. Her harassment in this country is reprehensible. We should have honoured this brave and sensitive writer with a Deshikottama award, not shut the door on her face.
Evidently, the minds of Bengali intellectuals are not without fear any more, as Rabindranath Tagore had envisaged. Will they be able to hold their heads high ever again?
(The author is a writer of cultural essays and fiction.)
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