Kolkata: Exiled Bangladeshi writer and rights activist Taslima Nasreen returned to Kolkata amid tight security on Friday.
The author, who is also a qualified doctor, was charged with blasphemy and exiled from Bangladesh in 1994, after her first book “Lajja” was published.
She then started living in Kolkata, but was forced to leave the city in 2007 after fundamentalists took to the streets. She has been living in Delhi since on an extended resident permit by the Government of India.
Nasreen will attend a public reception in her honour and programme against fundamentalism in the city on Saturday. The event is scheduled to be attended by West Bengal chief minister Suvendu Adhikari, as reported by News18.
The author faced protests in Kolkata in 2007 over her novel ‘Dwikhondito’. The book was a memoir which had ignited a controversy.
Before reaching Kolkata, Taslima had expressed hope that the visit would reaffirm the importance of freedom of expression and protection of dissenting voices, The Telegraph reported.
Returning to the city felt like coming back to “my own country”, she said.
Controversy first erupted in 2003, after her memoir ‘Dwikhondito’ was released. Muslims claimed that the book hurt their religious sentiments. The then Left Front government in West Bengal came under pressure and banned the book in the state.
The Calcutta High Court, in 2005, overturned the ban and the book went into circulation again. Radical groups in Kolkata reportedly started mobilising against her and the book from that time.
Taslima came under attack in Hyderabad in 2007 during the launch of the translation of one more of her books ‘Shodh’.
The fundamentalists in Kolkata, who were waiting in the wings till then, sought to ride the momentum and issued a Fatwa against her. Some organisations even mobilised to demand her deportation.
Matters reached a boiling point in November 2007 when protesters took to the streets in Kolkata, causing arson and vandalism. The Army had to be called in to quell the violence.
Taslima said that the years away from Kolkata had done nothing to the connection she felt with the city and West Bengal. Kolkata was not just a city where she lived but it gave her a sense of belonging, she said, while speaking to PTI.
“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.
“I am returning with joy, but also with pain. Kolkata was not merely a city where I lived; it was where I had a home, friends, readers and a sense of belonging. Nearly nineteen years were taken from me, and no homecoming can return those lost years. I am not returning as a stranger or a guest. I am returning as someone who has always considered herself part of Bengal,” Taslima added.
The visit to the city “represents the return of a voice that fundamentalists once tried to silence,” she said, thanking the organisers of the event for inviting her and government for facilitating her visit.