Paris, May 20
Exiled Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen today said she plans to return to her adoptive home - India - by August, just months after she was hounded out of the country by Islamic radical death threats.“I hope the Indian government will allow me to stay and live there peacefully,” said the 45-year-old.
Nasreen fled to Sweden in March after five months in an Indian government safe house, where she said the stress from her isolated, prison-like conditions sent her blood pressure soaring and affected her heart and eyesight.
In Paris for three days for the release of a book on her time in hiding, she said she had recovered her health and plans to fly back to India before August 17, when her current six-month resident permit expires. “Whether I would be allowed to live a normal life or forced to live under house arrest I don’t know. So I have to go there and see.”
Nasreen was first forced to flee Bangladesh in 1994 after radical Muslims accused her of blasphemy over her novel - ‘Lajja’ or ‘Shame’ - which depicts the life of a Hindu family persecuted by Muslims in the country.
Then in November she was forced to leave Kolkata after receiving death threats from radical Indian Muslims and hounded into hiding in New Delhi where she says the government repeatedly urged her to leave the country.
Nasreen said she was ‘devastated’ to have been forced into a second exile and lashed out at Indian politicians for failing to stand up for her in the face of extremist threats.
“When the so-called secular people, only because of votes, bow their head in front of fundamentalists and appease them, they destroy the country,” she said.
“By throwing me out, the government of Bangladesh gave victory to the fundamentalists. Now the same thing happened in India.”
— AFP
