Our autumn moments of protest
Taslim Nasrine under attack by the activists of the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (MIM) at the Hyderabad Press club on August 9, 2007.
I.Do we have to like Taslima Nasrine's work to protest what she faces? On Jan 16, 2008, Bengali Muslims of West Bengal under the Dharmamukto Manabbadi Mancha (DMM) (Secular Humanist Forum) demanded that Taslima Nasrin be brought back to the city from which she was rather hastily 'expelled' by the CPI-M led government reeling under the after-effects of massive protests. Its actions against protesting peasants in August became attached to the issue of sanctuary given to the writer. CPM workers and police had clashed violently with peasants in Singur and Nandigram areas of West Bengal where the government was attempting to take over land for setting up industrial zones from rather unenthusiastic peasants, many of whom were not convinced of the cash-for-land deal. The anti-CPM political groups, both Maoists and Mamata Banerjee's Trinamool Congress Party cadres, helped a resistance that turned the conflict into a bloody confrontation leading to death and ravaging of villages. It gave CPM a bad name it never thought it could ever get in a state it has ruled for over 25 years. It also happened that the villagers of the areas were mostly Muslims. A land question became an issue of repression against minority Muslims through an inevitable religious-ethnic interpretation and the ancient demons of communalism raised their never-slumbering heads once more. Enter Taslima, caught once again in someone else's war and this time in another people's land. The anti-CPM agitation became an opportunity for the religious right of the Islamic variety to get organized against the real and imagined angst of being a minority in a 'forbidden land'. The rage against CPM became the outrage of the marginalized Muslims there. If to most political souls, it was a display of CPM's arrogance bred by a long residence in power, to many it was also a display of Muslim anger against authorities there. With Islam-baiting gone global, the sense of anger was directed against a person who has all over the world become a symbol of having stood against the traditional in Islam, even religion. Taslima suddenly found herself paying the price of CPM's unusual industrialization strategy. Almost threatened by her erstwhile friends, she fled Bengal, a place she had wanted to call home. Out of Bengal, the Indian government moved her from safe house to safe house, as she tasted being on the run in the land she had least expected to. It was in the Indian IT hub of Hyderabad, also home to many Islamic extremist groups that she was attacked physically in August 2007 and death threats were meted out. It was something she hadn't even experienced in Bangladesh. II.
These are difficult days for her as she was plunged into difficulties in sequence. Taslima, a doctor, suffers from diabetes and high blood pressure. In late December she suddenly suffered from a reaction to prescription medicines and had to be rushed to AIIMS, India's top medical outfit located in Delhi. She emerged unscathed but complained of a life "worse than being a bird in a gilded cage." India is certainly not feeling comfortable with her either and in an extraordinary case, the Indian government requested the visiting French Premier Nicholas Sarkozy not to bestow Taslima with the Simone de Bouvier award for 'upholding rights of women" when the former came on a state visit. Somebody was certainly uneasy, if not afraid, of the ruckus that would have ensued if Taslima was saluted when voices are baying for her blood. Taslima's visa expires on February 17. No one is sure any more about an extension. NDTV remarks that the request to the French authorities shows how scared Indian secular traditions now are running. The TV station itself was attacked when it suggested the name of M.F. Hussain, the painter, for the Bharat Ratna, India's highest award. III.
The advantage is with intolerance now. In the name of belief, ideology, patriotism and every other dogma, evidence suggests that violence against those dissenting can be carried out. We saw the killing of Bangladeshi intellectuals in 1971 for standing up what they stood for. After 37 years the fact that the killers roam free means killing someone for one's belief is both justified and a safe act of criminality. Today it has become a deadly tradition. Our present lot of intellectuals should see it coming not just in the extremist's activism but the reluctance of the state to extend protection to dissidents and in the jailing of protesters. If India has fallen to that state where Hussain has to depart India for safety, Taslima may not be far behind. Shouldn't there have been more voices, words and letters in Bangladesh saying that what is happening to Taslima is wrong and we have the courage and moral conviction to say so, never mind what we think of her writings. This is particularly so in case of the 'pro-1971' group of intellectuals. After all, they have been on the forefront of such issues before, or are they playing it safe knowing that speaking out for Taslima would make them unpopular? Or do we like what is happening to her? The point is, this is not about Taslima at all or her work, which I personally don't enjoy and have read as backgrounders only when covering her in assignments. This is about intellectual freedom and new frameworks of coercion. Just because there are people who don't hesitate to hit women doesn't mean one should remain silent. It's this fear that has brought us to the point where our governments have had no clue on how to deal with the people who opposed the very state that our leaders represent and rule, inviting the same opponents to Bangladesh to discuss running the state they tried to kill. The arrow that kills is drawn long before it flies home.
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