By Pradipta Tapadar, IANS,
Kolkata : The cancellation of the release of controversial author Taslima Nasreen’s autobiography at the famed Kolkata Book Fair has thrown the spotlight on the destructive clout of religious fanatics in a city once known for savouring cultural pluralism.
Last week’s incident, coupled with the Salman Rushdie controversy – when the Booker awardee had to call off his visit and then his much-anticipated video address at the Jaipur Literature Festival following security threats triggered by some Islamic groups’ protest – would go down as another instance of Indian authorities and parties kowtowing before religious rabblerousers.
While the Rushdie episode saw the political parties and the government, in the words of novelist Vikram Seth, “knuckling under” an “enforced disgrace because of power and politics”, the only difference here was that publishers went ahead with the launch of the book at the fair, despite the hostile attitude of organisers.
The seventh volume of Nasreen’s book “Nirbasan” (Exile), which deals with her life after exile from Kolkata in 2007 and which almost nobody had read before the release, saw religious fundamentalists protesting against the launch.
This was nothing new for the Bangladesh-born author, a doctor by profession in the early 80s, who was forced to leave her country in 1994 after there was widespread agitation against her novel “Lajja”, which a section of people saw as an assault on Islam.
Hours before the release function, the organisers telephoned the publishers, People’s Book Society, asking them to cancel the programme due to “logistical problems”. But later it transpired that some Islamic groups had approached the authorities and the city police against the book release.
A top official of the organising body, Publishers’ and Book Sellers’ Guild, confirmed the development and stoutly defended its decision to stop the launch.
“We cannot allow any such thing to happen inside the Book Fair premises which can hurt the interest of the common people coming to the fair. We cannot allow anything that may hurt the religious sentiments of any community.”
Be it Jaipur or Kolkata, political parties remained mum or played it safe, ahead of the Uttar Pradesh assembly polls where Muslims will constitute a key vote segment.
Since 1994, Taslima had been living in exile in various parts of Europe and America and was granted Swedish citizenship. She was later granted a renewable temporary residential permit by the Indian government and moved in 2004 to Kolkata, which, according to Taslima, is her adopted home as it shares a common tradition and language with Bangladesh.
But the author had to face the ire of Muslim clerics here who issued a fatwa against her and announced a reward for anybody who “blackened the author’s face”. The state government, under immense pressure from the cultural fraternity, provided her police protection.
She was finally forced to leave Kolkata in 2007, after Muslim groups revived their fatwa against her and led a widespread unrest across the city with the demand of her exile from the country. Faced with a riot-like situation, the then Left Front government called on the army to control the situation but openly advocated her exile from the state, where Muslims constitute 27 percent of the electorate.
Ironically, it was the same Left Front government which had offered to provide shelter and rehabilitate Qutubuddin Ansari, one of the victims of the 2002 Gujarat riots.
But still Taslima and the publishers may have the last laugh as the controversy saw the book getting a huge response.
“One thousand copies of the first print were sold out within a day. We had to order another reprint,” said Shibani Mukherjee of the Peoples’ Book Society.
(Pradipta Narayan Tapadar can be contacted at [email protected])