Taslima Nasreen, a former Bangladeshi writer living in the US, has returned to Kolkata for the first time in nearly nineteen years. Walking on the city’s soil again, she said it was a long-anticipated return to what she has always held to be a cultural centre of the heart of Kolkata as her home - even though she was ousted from it for political expediency more than two decades ago. She is scheduled to make a public appearance at a literary event that has taken on a new political and cultural significance now with West Bengal’s governance.
A Long and Painful Exile Ends. As she reflected on her dramatic departure in November 2007— when pressure and violent demonstrations over her controversial writings forced her to leave the city— Nasreen nearly lost hope for ever returning. There was a story that she fled Bangladesh in 1994 because of intense fundamentalist pressure over her novel Lajja and had come to the city of Kolkata as her sole sanctuary and home. But her sanctuary was soon shattered by the time the administration of her time bowed to radical pressure and pulled her out.
In an address to the media when she arrived, Nasreen explained that while the east of Bengal is still closed to her due to the constant threats, returning to West Bengal feels like returning to her own country. She recalled her moving poem in exile Prashna (Question) in which she wrote that she couldn’t imagine her loved Kolkata would ever come back to her, even when she was alive. With her return to public literary conversation, she felt that her question has finally been answered.
A Culturally and Politically Significant Event. Nasreen’s return is based on an anti-fundamentalism literary programme at the iconic Rabindra Sadan cultural centre. The event has attracted huge attention to celebrate her literary contributions and her unwavering opposition to religious extremism. West Bengal Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari and Bengali novelist Shirshendu Mukhopadhyay will be present and will give the event both an official and literary weight.
Although civil society organizers have framed the gathering as a celebration of free expression and literature, the visit has a political significance as well. Just weeks into a transition in political leadership in the state’s political system, the invitation to return to the country, her return has also raised the temperature of the state’s political leadership to a whole new level of respect for freedom of speech and secularism, and protection of writers who are persecuted. The nineteen lost years of lost time for Nasreen can never be taken away from her but this victory is an overwhelming success story of her resilience and a seminal step for intellectual freedom in the region, and that achievement is a proud chapter in history.
