Taslima Nasreen ‘forced’ to leave India again

NEW DELHI: Exiled Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasreen has again been “forced” to leave India after her brief stay here, prompting the controversial writer to question the country’s alleged secular credentials.

The writer, who returned to India on August 8, said she had to leave on October 15 following the government’s dictum.

“Yes, I was forced to leave India once again… The government gave me resident permit for 6 months with a secret condition that I must leave the country in a few days,” she told reporters in an e-mail interview.

The ex-physician-turned-feminist author, who is under attack from Muslim fundamentalists for her book ‘Lajja’, said she is now somewhere in Europe, delivering lectures.

Taslima’s second exit from India comes seven months after she was forced to leave the country in view of protests by fundamentalist groups against her presence here.

Prior to her departure, she had been living in Kolkata since 1994 after being exiled from Bangladesh over her book, which was dubbed anti-Islam by the fundamentalists.

“The condition of getting permission to reside in India is yet a direction for not to reside in India.” She said she will “go back” to India in January.

“As the door of Bangladesh is closed for me, my home, I still consider, is in India, in the West Bengal city of Kolkata. If I am not allowed to return there, then it is back to nomadic existence again, without a land, without a home,” the author said.

Expressing her angst over being shunted out again and again, she said “India, which prides itself of being the world’s largest democracy, an allegedly secular state, could not give shelter to me.”

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