[sacw] [ACT] sacw dispatch (17 March 00)

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Web Dispatch
17 March 2000
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#1. BJP Making Politics & Culture as Blood Sports
#2. Taslima Nasreen Interviewed in Communalism Combat
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#1.

=46rontline, March 17, 2000
=46rontline Column: Beyond the Obvious
[by] Praful Bidwai

POLITICS AND CULTURE AS BLOOD SPORTS

The BJP has introduced a sectarian, confrontationist fractiousness into
Indian politics by stamping all norms of decorum, decency and inclusivism
into the ground.

* *
The inclusion of Joerg Haider's extreme right-wing Freedom Party in
Austria's ruling coalition has sent shock waves through the world, and
drawn strong condemnation from anti-fascist forces in numerous countries.
=46ourteen European Union states have decided to suspend political contact
with Vienna. There is talk of economic sanctions. Ambassadors are being
withdrawn. Artistes are leaving Austria. Conductor Zubin Mehta is thinking
of quitting. Impressive mass protests are being mobilised in Vienna's
streets, the latest involving 200,000 people, including leading scholars,
human rights activists, teachers, and trade unionists.

This is as it should be. Haider is an abject apologist for Nazism. His
oblique defence of the Anschluss and of Hitler's shock troops as "decent
fellows" has alarmed people. As has his vile anti-immigrant posture.

By contrast, the international community has been soft on India's extreme
Right, led by the BJP. In fact, most Western governments have treated the
BJP with kid gloves, as if it were some Hindu version of a moderate,
"normal", if Right-leaning, Christian Democratic party. President Clinton's
scheduled visit to India signifies the BJP's "normalisation" and acceptance
of its politics, along with an effort to "initiate" India into the world's
Nuclear Club. Yet the BJP belongs to the same current of intolerant,
exclusivist, authoritarian ethnic politics that joins today's Freedom Party
with the original National Socialists and Fascists. The ideology that
inspired Gandhiji's assassination for his "betrayal" of Hindus is part of a
continuum that stretches from Hitler's anti-Semitism and Mussolini's
fascist nationalism, from Auschwitz and Dachau, to "ethnic cleansing" in
Bosnia and the BJP's anti-Muslim campaigns. Qualitatively, there is not
much to choose between Haider's anti-immigrant stance and the sangh
parivar's anti-Bangladeshi hysteria. There is a difference, of course.
Haider talks. The BJP does. Haider threatens. The BJP acts.

In Germany in the 1930s, the mere mention of the word "culture" provoked
Goebbels to reach for his gun. In India in 2000, the shooting of a film
about the exploitation of widows impels such intemperate hate speech by BJP
ministers and cadres that the entire cinema crew is chased away despite the
script having been cleared by the information and broadcasting ministry.

The "Water" episode is only the latest in a series of acts of sangh
vandalism, going back to the ransacking of newspaper offices in the 1980s,
destruction of the Babri mosque in 1992, closing of the Sahmat exhibition
on the Ramayana, tearing up of M.F. Hussain's paintings, attacks on Deepa
Mehta's "Fire", and the purge of secular scholars from a number of
institutions subsequently. The antics of the Shiv Sena, BJP and other sangh
fronts such as the VHP, ABVP, Bajrang Dal and Kashi Hindu Sanskriti
Suraksha Sangarsh Samiti, are so frequent as to have become routine.

Of a piece with this are three recent developments: withdrawal by the
Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR) of two volumes of documentary
history by Professors K.N. Panikkar and Sumit Sarkar; the shameful defence
of Staines' killer Dara Singh by BJP Rajya Sabha MP Dilip Singh Judev; and
the sangh parivar's announcement from Lucknow of a new "Hindu jagran
(awakening)" campaign, menacingly calculated to revive the Ayodhya issue.
These developments add up to a shift in the very goal-posts of our politics
and terms of our cultural discourse. Allowing the sangh parivar to get away
with this is tantamount to wilfully inflicting grave damage upon ourselves,
comparable only to allowing government employees to join the RSS en masse.

The censorship of the two ICHR volumes is such a blatant violation of
academic freedom that it is just impossible to condemn it too strongly.
Never before has communal prejudice, philistinism and petty-mindedness
found such a powerful ally as the human resources development ministry
under Murli Manohar Joshi. Joshi, perhaps the crudest personification of
bigotry to adorn that office, is bent on destroying every vestige of
independence and secularism from our academic world. He has stuffed our
already feeble and under-funded apex research institutions with RSS cadres
who lack elementary academic competence, even integrity. Their entire
agenda is putschist: grab, divide, split, ruthlessly push communalism as
part of Hindutva's aggressive project to colonise our minds with hatred,
and infuse poison into the education system, which will affect whole
generations of Indians.

This single-mindedness impelled ICHR officials to claim-shamelessly and
falsely---that the two professors, outstanding scholars known for
rectitude, had passed on the "Towards Freedom" manuscripts to Oxford
University Press without proper "authorisation". Statements by Professor S.
Gopal, the chief editor of "Towards Freedom", as well as other evidence
including a preface written by a former ICHR chairman to an earlier volume
in the same series demolish the claim. Such utter disregard, in fact
disrespect, for the truth, is deeply deplorable, especially in a learned
institution.

The ICHR and ICSSR are fragile, and despite being "autonomous", helplessly
dependent on the HRD ministry's whims. As someone who served a term on the
governing body of the latter, this writer can testify to just how weak is
the claim to "autonomy". Petty HRD bureaucrats often dictate or veto the
research budgets of ICSSR-affiliated institutes. The way they are going,
Joshi and Co will totally undermine these apex bodies with their abominably
communal agendas, and turn India into the world's fundamentalist
intellectual backwater.

Joshi has been particularly forceful in pushing the RSS agenda. He has made
about 250 key appointments to institutions as varied as the Indira Gandhi
National Centre for the Arts and University Grants Commission, the ICHR and
National Council for Educational Research and Training. RSS insiders say he
has done much more than L.K. Advani to advance Hindutva-style "cultural
nationalism". He alone among BJP ministers has appointed hardcore RSS
cadres to his personal staff. This saffronisation is far, far more thorough
and dangerous than anything Advani achieved in the 1977-79 Janata
government as I&B minister--whose effects are being felt to this day in
Doordarshan, news agencies and even in the PMO.

Meanwhile, not to be left behind, the home ministry is also pushing ahead
with its harassment of several secular-spirited NGOs through the leverage
provided by the Foreign Contributions Regulation Act. Highly regarded
organisations like Indian Social Institute, Kali for Women, and Centre for
Education and Communication, which were served notices two months ago, have
just received another round of pro forma letters which ask them to open all
their book on the vague ground that "the Central government has reasons to
believe that [certain provisions of Section 6 and 13] of the Act read with
Rule 4(a) and of the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Rules, 1976, have
been violated" by them.

No less brazen is Dilip Singh Judev's exoneration of Dara Singh, who has
finally been arrested for the gruesome murder of Graham Staines and his
young children. Judev has long led a campaign for "re-conversion" of
tribals to Hinduism. He claims that Singh was innocent and the killings
were "the handiwork of certain forces determined to brand =8A Hindus =8A as
bigoted and blood-thirsty". BJP President Kushabhau Thakre has asked him to
withdraw his remarks about Dara Singh's "innocence". But it is virtually
certain that the BJP will not dissociate itself from Judev's view that "the
Staines killings seem to be part of a wider conspiracy" and that "Hinduism
is the most democratic and liberal" of all the religions. The BJP
leadership believes this. It has also echoed---and none other than
Vajpayee has said this---Judev's claim that "we will not allow conversion
to take place in the garb of missionary work. Crores of rupees are being
pumped into the country for this purpose".

What we are witnessing here is a transformation of the terms of our public
discourse, in which gory murders inspired by rank religious prejudice
become at least partly legitimate because "religious conversion" is
coercive in the first place. We parrot the mantra, Hinduism is the most
tolerant of all religions, even when its fanatical adherents act in a
viciously intolerant manner. Terrible lies are told and extraordinarily
offensive and obnoxious remarks are made. When they create an uproar, they
are only partially denied. Their substance enters "mainstream" discourse to
become part of the accepted, self-evident, commonsense of this society.

Under this discourse, hate speech is first condoned, and then regularised
and routinised. This is precisely what happened with the BJP's
anti-Christian campaign where the agenda of religious freedom was hijacked
and distorted into a fake "debate" on how much coercion should be used to
stop "conversion". Here we are already being asked to accept that
conversion is something shady and unlawful---which it is not. The same
phenomenon was in evidence on the "Water" issue, which was used by sangh
hooligans as licence to abuse. Some sangh activists even went as far as to
demand---as proof of the script's reference to the Brahmin's privilege to
marry women of all other castes---that the actress who plays young widow in
the film sleep with him, a Brahmin.

The sangh parivar's announcement of "Hindu jagran" is no less distressing.
It focuses on the forthcoming 50th anniversary of the revovation of the
Somnath temple, which then ignited such strong emotions in Parliament that
Nehru had to intervene. The parivar plans a long march from Somnath to
Ayodhya joined by 250 smaller yatras. More dangerously, it is planning to
take over three smaller monuments in Ayodhya---Sakshi Gopal, Seshavatar and
Sita ki Rasoi---as it accelerates preparations to carve marble pillars and
other components of a "grand" temple to Rama by quadrupling the number of
artisans. The sangh is cynically exploiting widespread prejudice about the
"plunder" of the Somnath temple, so ably criticised by Professor Romila
Thapar in her recent work, which casts serious doubts on a number of
"historical" claims.

The sangh is bent on pushing divisive agendas through brutal force. This is
a strategy to create discord. The BJP is trampling on all norms of the
parliamentary conduct. Take the Constitutional review issue. The BJP knows
it lacks a mandate to review the Constitution, even to amend it. And yet,
it is promoting a rolling, open-ended, review. Constitutions and basic
framework of governance are not things that you trifle with. In South
Africa's first universal suffrage-based elections, the African National
Congress commanded an overwhelming majority. It could easily have formed a
government on its own, and pushed through its own Constitution. Instead, it
wisely opted for a national government which would give representation to
all significant currents in politics and generate the broadest possible
agreement. That's how a strong, durable, consensus emerges, which does not
exclude groups which deserve to be heard.

By contrast, the BJP is adversarialist, contentious, majoritarian and
undemocratic. It denies its opponents any possibility of inclusion, debate
or consensus. It treats them as criminals. Democracy is not about imposing
your will upon others. Nor can it work through bullying tactics to drive
your opponents out of office. Rather, democracy is about exercising power
through reference to shared norms. But democratic politics is fundamentally
alien to the sangh parivar. Its entire political-ideological orientation is
authoritarian and based on the imposition of the majority's will upon
minorities.

The ideological formation of the BJP-RSS's top leadership occurred under
the influence of Nazism and Fascism. Golwalkar was an ardent admirer of
Hitler's "racial purity" thesis. As Italian scholar Marzia Casolari writes
in an excellent article in Economic and Politial Weekly (January 22-28),
there were numerous connections between Hindutva's founding fathers and
=46ascists. B.S. Moonje, the RSS-Hindu Mahasabha's ideological mentor,
visited Italy in 1931 and was received by Mussolini himself. This affinity
went beyond mere common hatred of the British, soon to be at war with the
Axis powers. It was deeply ideological and shared Fascism's basic premises
about society and politics, its jingoistic nationalism, and its obsession
with "internal enemies" (Muslims).

A line of continuity runs from Savarkar and Mussolini to Golwalkar and
Nathuram Godse, from Hedgewar and Upadhyay to Advani-Joshi-Vajpayee and
Thackeray, from Hitler's SS to our own Shiv Sena. That's why Haider's
lineage is not very different from Vajpayee's. The BJP is no Hindu version
of Christian Democracy. It is a far more extreme current, which seeks to
radically communalise society. The West's mollycoddling of the BJP derives
from profound ignorance, cultural superciliousness, and an arrogant
"Orientalist" assumption about the inevitability and irrepressibility of
ethnic factors in Third World societies. But we should know better. And we
should show we know better by rejecting and fighting Hindutva. It is time
now to mobilise in the streets.---end---
----------------

#2.
Communalism Combat
March 2000
Cover Story

THE PEN IS MY ONLY WEAPON

Born in 1962, Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen shot to international
fame in 1993 when her novel Lajja - a story on the plight of a
persecuted Hindu family in Bangladesh following the demolition of the
Babri Masjid in Ayodhya in December 1992 - was banned by the Bangladesh
government succumbing to the outcry of fanatics belonging to the
Jamaat-e-Islami and other communal organisations.
The first fatwa against Nasreen was announced at a rally in Sylhet in
September 1993. At this stage the immediate provocation was the very
publication of Lajja.
But none of Nasreen's writings could have been palatable to sectarian
forces that use violence and threats to get their way. Through her
newspaper columns, poems and other writings she questioned the role that
religion itself played, in her opinion, of oppressing people, especially
women.
A controversial interview given to The Statesman, Calcutta, the
following year was the proverbial last straw on the camel's back.
Soon after her return to her country, in June 1994, Nasreen was forced
to go into hiding after the Bangladeshi government, instead of taking
action against the criminals responsible for provoking violence and
threats against her, Nasreen's arrest for alleged blasphemy. Another
fatwa of 50,000 takas was put on her head by a local mullah.
After 60 days underground, in an atmosphere of growing countrywide
hysteria, Nasreen, who was in real danger of losing her life, was
advised by her lawyers to flee her country illegally.=20
=46or six years now, Nasreen has lived the life of an exile in Europe.
Allowed back on the sub-continent for the first time in November 1999 on
a visitor's visa, Nasreen was on her second visit to India last week
when she stopped by in Mumbai for a day, during which she addressed a
public meeting.=20

REPRODUCED BELOW ARE EXCERPTS FROM NASREEN'S INTERVIEW TO COMMUNALISM
COMBAT DURING HER ONE-DAY VISIT TO MUMBAI:
What exactly was the issue that triggered the onslaught against you
seven years ago?

Ever since I started writing, fundamentalist forces were unhappy with
me. Because in my writings, I expressed the view - my view - that it is
not merely the fundamentalists' interpretation of religion but religion
itself that oppresses women. This they could not stand. Until the point
when I said that it was the fundamentalists' control and hold over
religion that oppresses women, progressive groups, even some sections of
religious people supported me.=20
Around that time, a lot of writings all over the world had been
published arguing that it was not religions per se, but the narrow and
fundamentalist interpretations of them that were the cause of injustices
and oppressions.=20
But when I told them the truth, as I saw it, it was unacceptable to
them. I quoted from the Quran and Hadith to say that it is religion
itself that is responsible. That is when the whole country went against
me. Still, I did not stop saying it.
They burnt all my books. It was not only Lajja. Lajja was banned by the
government so Lajja was picked up by the media. But it began with
Nivrachita Kalam (Selected Columns), a collection of my columns written
for Bangladeshi newspapers.
In 1993, three fatwas were issued and a price was put on my head several
times. Strangely, the Bangladeshi government, instead of taking action
against the fundamentalists for their criminal actions, issued an arrest
warrant against me. This was really ridiculous.=20
Lajja was published at the end of January 1993. It told a story that I
had seen with my own eyes. The story of how, after the demolition of the
Babri Masjid in India, temples were destroyed in Bangladesh and the
Hindu minority targeted there. It was sold at the book fair in Dacca in
=46ebruary 1993. Three months later, it was banned.
Anyway, at the beginning of 1994 on my return from France, in Calcutta
The Statesman published the controversial interview that precipitated
matters. The journalist obviously did not know the difference between
the Quran and the Shariat. She made a mistake, quoting me as saying that
the 'Quran should be revised or rewritten.' Next day I wrote a protest
to the paper correcting the mistake. I said, "I don't believe in the
Quran. I believe that the religious scriptures are out of place, out of
time. So why should I ask for the revision of the Quran?"=20
What I asked for then, and now, is the abolition of Shariat law and the
legislating of a uniform civil code to ensure justice between men and
women.=20
My rejoinder was published but the Bangladeshi newspapers only picked up
the first story with my interview that had the mistake. They did not
publish my correction. Anyway this was enough to make them crazy. It was
not only the fundamentalists. But the fundamentalist groups and all the
political groups became united at the time. When they started protesting
and holding demonstrations against me, it started getting unbearable.
Three hundred thousand people, five hundred thousand people every day on
the streets, baying for me. Then the government issued the arrest
warrant against me. So it was with the Bangladeshi government and the
fundamentalist forces ganging up that I had nowhere to go.=20
All those crazy people just wanting to kill me. They called general
strikes, hartals. Everything was forcibly closed, for seven days, ten
days to pressurise the government. Six people were killed in one day
when people tried to re-open their shops defying the general strikes.=20
I had to go into hiding because I knew that if the police put me in
prison I may never come out alive. Political murder is not uncommon in
Bangladesh. The police could be fundamentalists believing that if they
killed me they would go to heaven!
It became increasingly difficult for me. Very, very difficult for me to
find a place. Nobody wanted to give me shelter.=20
Some people, very good people, supported me. I had to move from one
place to another every night, not staying more than one night at one
place. I stayed in hiding in small dark rooms of a 15-member family,
among whom only one knew that I am in hiding. I couldn't get food for
four days, six days. Because the person protecting me, she or he had to
be careful not to approach me with food. So she would come to me
stealthily like a cat after midnight and bring me some food. That's all.
I could not sleep, I just could not sleep, I was so scared.=20
I still hoped all through this dark period that things would change. My
lawyers, too, were trying hard for me. But, after one and a half months
my lawyers said that it is impossible to save you. We cannot continue
anymore. Leave the country illegally.
The situation was out of control. The fundamentalists were on the street
and the country was in their hands. At the time, though there was some
opposition to the fundamentalists with groups coming out against the
frenzy and violence of the fundamentalists, they were drowned out.
Bangladesh became a fundamentalist country. And the government couldn't
or didn't want to control them.
So some people bought me a wig with long hair and a burkha. I did not at
that point believe that I would survive. No, no.=20
It was impossible. Few believed I would make it. But there was a lot of
international pressure. Western governments had tried to put pressure to
grant me bail but it did not work. After two months of negotiations and
with the help of Europe and democratic governments, the government
agreed to let me be taken out. I was taken out by the security police to
the plane, on to Sweden. It was the EU's decision that Sweden would be a
good choice for my immediate asylum.=20
This was in August 1994.=20
The chief police officer, of the foreign ministry of Sweden came to
collect me from my hiding in Dacca. It was 2 a.m. when I left my
country. It was arranged that the security police would take me from my
place to the plane. For two hours before I boarded the plane, they
wanted me to disclose the names of all those who had sheltered me for 45
days. I never, never told the name of anybody. They were obviously
trying to oblige the Bangladeshi government who had to buckle under
persistent international pressure and let me go.
Anyway, I was taken by the Swedish authorities and my life was saved.
But those 60 days haunt me still. They remain, for me, a nightmare. How
did I survive those sixty long days?
Have you written any personal account of that time?
Many publishers, even in Europe, have asked me to write about the period
in hiding. I tried but couldn't. I started, one page, two pages, five
pages but I just could not continue. Maybe some day I will be able to
write. Just now it is too close, all still right in front of me.
Do you repent the stand you took considering that the cost has been so
high?
Never.
Don't you miss your country?
It is nearly six years that I have been out of my country. I miss my
country. I feel scared to count the years=8AI could not write for three
years after I left. Then, slowly, I managed to start again.=20
What are you writing now?
I have just finished the first part of my autobiography Amaar Meyebela
(My Girlhood). You know this has been published in French, German and
other European languages uncensored. The Bengali version published by a
publisher from West Bengal has had to be censored. Even the English
version being published by Kali for Women is being censored. Now I am
working on the second part, My Youth, that will be completed by the end
of this year.
What was it like to grow up in a country like Bangladesh before and
after the liberation war?
I wrote about this phase, in My Girlhood. I was born in 1962 and saw the
war in 1971. I witnessed, first hand, the mass demonstrations against
Pakistani rulers on the streets. The Bengali people were struggling for
their linguistic identity. It was a mass movement in 1969.=20
When Bangladesh was born in 1971, it was a secular country. We fought
for secularism. The Bangladesh war of 1971 proved that (Muslim)
religious unity is a myth. It also proved that the Partition of India
was wrong. It was such a positive battle. It had a positive meaning. But
something happened afterwards.=20
Political leaders were greedy for power and Sheikh Mujib-ur-Rehman, the
founding father of Bangladesh, was killed by the military and the
military used religion for their own vested interests to remain in
power. They did not think of the people. That is the way religion came
back into politics and secularism was thrown out. The fundamentalists
gained legitimacy.
You know, the really positive thing was that from 1971 onwards, after
the war when Bangladesh was born right until 1975, religious politics
was banned. Nobody, no religious persons or parties like the
Jamaat-e-Islami were allowed to participate in politics.
The Jamaat-e-Islami is the largest such religious-political group though
there are some others. During the liberation war these forces had sided
with the Pakistani army and killed Bengali people. They were Bengalis
but they betrayed their own people. Because they were collaborators with
the Pakistani army, for this reason religious politics was banned. But
after the death of Mujib-ur-Rehman they came back. The ban against them
was withdrawn.
Increasingly the secular fabric of Bangladesh has been damaged by the
sway of fundamentalists. Many NGOs have been attacked by
fundamentalists. Around 1992-1993, fundamentalists burnt 120 girls'
schools run by the oldest, most prestigious NGO of the country. They did
this spreading the myth that Christian schools are trying to make our
girls Christian!=20
The government took no action against these fundamentalists who had
committed this act. Not only that, the NGOs, too, started compromising
with these forces. They started creating not merely schools but also
madrassas to appease fundamentalists. Religious education was introduced
to compromise and buy peace.=20
Women who work with the NGOs are threatened by religious
fundamentalists. There were fatwas addressed to men whose wives work
with NGOs directing them to divorce their wives. So many women were
compelled to stop working with NGOs. So while there is good work being
done by some NGOs, religious fundamentalists are targeting them.
How do you trace your personal journey towards atheism?
I studied the religious scriptures. That was enough. In My Girlhood I
have described this process tracing it back to when I was 13-years-old.
It did not happen just like that. When I was 13 I got hold of a copy of
the Quran in Bengali so that I could read it and understand it. Every
day since I was little, I had been made to recite the Quran. I asked my
mother, who was very religious, "What is this that I am reciting?" "Just
recite the verses", she would tell me. "You don't need to know. You
don't have to know. Just recite."
I was never satisfied. I had to know the meaning of the verses that I
was reciting. I was very curious to find out their meaning. That is what
led me to find a copy of the Bengali translation. I read it and was full
of questions for my mother. I was never satisfied with her responses to
these questions. I read that the sun revolves around the earth, and many
things within the Holy Book that are totally contradictory to what my
other education and my life's experience taught me: that woman are
inferior and men superior because they earn money, that men have a right
to beat women if they don't follow husband's orders. These kinds of
things surprised me and caused me to wonder and question how all this
can be contained in a Holy Book? I also saw what was happening in
society in the name of religion.
Studying science in school and reading the Quran and its meaning at home
brought me face to face with many contradictions. I found that what was
written in the book was both illogical and inhuman. There are many parts
of My Girlhood that have been censored by different publishers.=20
I was a very shy person. I was beaten by my father a lot, for studies. I
never protested but I kept all the pain inside me so that perhaps one
day, I could release them in my writing.=20
There were many incidents like this through which I experienced that
something is wrong with religion. All religions. I happened to be
brought up in a Muslim family, so my revolt is against Islam. But there
is fundamentalism in every religion and women are oppressed by every
religion.
What is your major concern as a writer - the gender question or the
minority question?
It is really about oppressed peoples. Women are oppressed, religious
minorities are oppressed, the poor are oppressed. I talk about them in
my writing. I defend them.
Your message is through your writing. How much difference does it make
to the people whose voices you portray? Does your writing in anyway
change the overall scheme of things?
Well, you know on the sub-continent 70-80 per cent of the people are
illiterate. So as a writer, how many people can I reach? That's the
first question. Only educated middle class people in urban societies.
That's all. Most of our people live in villages, in horrible
conditions.=20
However, when I was writing my columns in Bangladeshi papers, I found
ordinary women responding to me. They would say that I was writing their
story so I should never stop. They were all silently supporting me, they
would say. One woman recalled how she was forced to stop studying but
inspired by my book she would return to studying. Others, after being
educated, were prevented from working and they found strength to
challenge this state of affairs. There were stories of unspeakable
torture of wives by their husbands who also felt inspired to challenge
their condition after reading my writing.=20
But this was a smaller community. The larger number of women are beyond
my reach. They cannot read, they cannot write. I think of them.
Ever since my writings became controversial and I became the target of
fundamentalists' attack, I was assaulted, insulted, I was even stoned by
fundamentalists in public places. I could not go out. All this
restricted my access to remote areas, to villages. I was confined to my
room.=20
As long as I wrote love poems, which I started in 1975, it was fine. But
since 1990, when my writings became social and political, directly
related to women's condition, the problems began. But still, ideas that
challenge the status quo travel in many ways. That is my hope.
What do you feel is the role of the writer and his or her relationship
with social movements?
I was and am an individual writer. I worked in the hospital as a doctor
and I used to write because I always thought I had to say something. As
a doctor I cured the disease of the people, as a writer I tried to cure
the disease within society. I never meant to be a writer. I was not a
member of any women's organisation. People used to ask, how come Taslima
Nasreen is called a feminist, she has never come to the streets, never
been part of the movement? I intentionally abstained from membership of
any women's organisation because I believed that as an individual I had
the right to say what I wanted, a right that would get qualified if I
became part of any women's organisation. Women's organisations
compromise so much. I did not want that for myself. I was also surprised
at the attitude of women's organisations to the mounting tirades against
me in Bangladesh. They would say to me, you become a member of our
organisation, then we will support you. I found this very surprising.
I am actually not very good as a street marcher. All my anger and
protest is through my writing.=20
You have written a lot about the re-unification of Bangladesh and West
Bengal as a separate Bengali identity. Do you still espouse that cause?
This is a complicated issue, not as simple as it appears. I think that
Bangladesh does not want it and West Bengal wants to remain with India.
India is a large country and there are many benefits being part of a
larger country. Even being a citizen of a large country has many
benefits. Besides, Bangladesh is a poor country, if it was a rich
country, this may have been a conceivable temptation.
There's also the question of religion, too, which is an issue here. If
such a unification were to take place, the Bengali Muslim would be in
the majority. The Hindu majority in present-day West Bengal would become
a minority. No majority likes to become a minority.
We do as writers, as secular activists, articulate this urge for such a
unification. I myself have written a lot on the subject for which I was
dubbed an 'anti-national traitor'! Simply because I said that I do not
respect the national boundary!
I dream of a situation, maybe 100, 200 years later when borders have no
meaning and relevance. A day when all borders and boundaries fly away
into the seventh sky. When the world will be one. It will have to be
when religion ceases to be important to people.=20
I do not think religion will exist 200 to 500 years later.=20
=20

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