The next Ayaan Hirsi Ali
is in India and her name is Taslima Nasrin
For more than a decade, the writer Taslima Nasrin has been fighting; fighting against the courts, fighting to be heard and fighting for her life. Last night, the Bangladeshi-born author was struggling again as violent protests in one city – and the purported threat of further violent protests in another – saw her shuttling across India to avoid angry Muslims who have accused her of insulting Islam.
"I have no place to go. India is my home and I would like to keep living in this country until I die," the Sakharov Prize winner told The Hindu newspaper. "Here in this country, I have got the love and sympathy of the people for which I am grateful."
On Thursday, Nasrin was forced to flee from the city of Kolkata where she has been living for the past two years, a day after Muslim activists led protests against her which resulted 50 people being injured and the imposition of a curfew. The All India Minorities Forum, a Muslim group, has demanded she be deported not just from Kolkata, formerly known as Calcutta, but from India.
But after one night in Jaipur, Rajasthan, the authorities there decided that Nasrin should also leave to avoid the risk of a repetition of violence. "She didn't inform the government of Rajasthan before coming here and as she requires high security we asked her to leave," the Home Minister, Gulab Chand Kataria, told reporters. As a result Nasrin was last night headed to Delhi, and presumably further controversy.
Controversy is nothing new for the writer. Having fled from Bangladesh in 1994, Nasrin has long been confronted by people who do not like what she has to say. After slipping out of Bangladesh where she was charged with blasphemy, the feminist writer spent many years in Sweden, before moving to Kolkata, a city with a long literary tradition. While her books have been translated into more than 20 languages, her first four autobiographical volumes remain banned in Bangladesh.
Sad, but true. I still salute her and her efforts. Please pass the word about her plight.
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