Exiled Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasreen returns to Kolkata after 19 years
Exiled Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasreen returned to Kolkata on Friday for the first time in nearly 19 years, ahead of a literary event on Saturday that has taken on political significance under West Bengal's new BJP government.
Greeting those who received her at Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose International Airport with folded hands, Nasreen said, "I am feeling very good to be back."
This is her first visit to Kolkata since November 2007, when she was forced to leave the city following violent protests over her writings, ending what she had often described as the closest thing to home after her exile from Bangladesh.
Nasreen is scheduled to make her first public appearance at an anti-fundamentalism literary programme at Rabindra Sadan, where she is expected to recite poetry. Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari and author Shirshendu Mukhopadhyay are among those expected to attend.
Ahead of her visit, Nasreen told PTI that returning to Kolkata felt like coming back to "my own country."
"I feel as though I am returning to my own country. Bengal has never been divided in my heart by a border or a barbed-wire fence. The door to the eastern part of Bengal remains closed to me, so for now, this part of Bengal is my home," she said.
She said she was returning "with joy, but also with pain," recalling that Kolkata had given her a home, friends, readers and a sense of belonging before she was forced to leave. She called the visit more than a personal homecoming, saying it symbolised the return of a voice that religious fundamentalists had once tried to silence. She also thanked the organisers and the present West Bengal government for facilitating her visit and providing security, asserting that a writer's freedom should remain a fundamental right irrespective of the ideology of the government in power.
Nasreen fled Bangladesh in 1994 following death threats over her novel "Lajja" and settled in Kolkata in 2004, embracing the Bengali-speaking city as her cultural refuge in exile. That association ended abruptly in November 2007 after violent protests erupted over portions of her memoir "Dwikhandito," which had already been banned by the then Left Front government in 2003 for allegedly hurting the sentiments of sections of the Muslim community.
As the protests escalated and the Army was deployed to restore order in parts of Kolkata, the Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee government asked Nasreen to leave the city. She was shifted to Jaipur and later Delhi before moving abroad, though she repeatedly expressed a desire to return to Kolkata for literary events. That return remained elusive for nearly two decades despite periodic appeals from writers and civil society and occasional political interventions.
The issue resurfaced nationally last year when BJP Rajya Sabha MP and current West Bengal BJP president Samik Bhattacharya urged the Centre in Parliament to facilitate her return, describing Nasreen as a fearless voice against Islamist fundamentalism.
The BJP has since sought to portray her homecoming as the correction of what it calls a long-standing failure of successive Left Front and Trinamool Congress governments to defend free speech in the face of religious pressure. Those governments, however, had maintained that the 2007 administrative decisions were dictated by the need to preserve public order amid escalating communal tensions.
Organisers have said Saturday's programme is intended to celebrate Nasreen's lifelong opposition to religious fundamentalism and reaffirm the principle of freedom of expression, rather than serve as a political platform. Even so, the symbolism surrounding her return has been widely noted, coming under a dramatically altered political dispensation nearly 19 years after she left a city that had been both sanctuary and exile.
(With PTI inputs)
