Taslima returns to Kolkata
Exiled Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen on Friday arrived in Kolkata to a roaring welcome at the Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose International Airport, 19 years after she was forced to leave the city in 2007 following violent protests from a section of right-wing Muslims who demanded her immediate ouster from the city.
Nasreen greeted the waiting crowd with folded hands, expressing her joy to be back. “Khub bhalo lagche (I am feeling very good to be back),” she said to the waiting people.
Nasreen is expected to take part in an anti-fundamentalism literary meet on Saturday in Kolkata, likely to be attended, amongst others, by Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari and veteran Bengali novelist Shirshendu Mukhopadhyay.
She was forced to leave the city in November 2007 when the then Buddhadeb Bhattacharya Government had to call out the military to contain a restive crowd after the then Imam of Tipu Sultan Barqati had given a call to blacken her face. Former Trinamool Congress MP late Idrish Ali had led a crowd protesting against her putting up in Kolkata and demanded her exit from the city.
The Left Government then asked her to go away. Before return to Kolkata, Nasreen recalled her compelled exit, saying she was returning to the city of joy, “with joy, but also with pain”, recalling how Kolkata that had given her a home, friends, readers and a sense of nearness, also forced her to leave.
“I would not leave Kolkata on my own … the then West Bengal Government compelled me to leave… but still I always dreamt of coming back,” she had said.
