In a message dated 11/28/2007 12:51:07 AM Eastern Standard Time, GopalSengupta writes:
Hon'ble Dr. Manmohan Singh
Prime Minister
Government of India
South Block, Raisina Hill,
New Delhi,
India-110 011.
Telephone: 91-11-23012312.
Fax: 91-11-23019545 / 91-11-23016857.
Hon'ble Prime Minister,
The recent agitation in Kolkata demanding that the visa of Taslima Nasreen should be invoked and that she should be asked to leave the country is most unfortunate. Ms. Nasreen has applied for Indian citizenship, and in accordance with the ruling of the Supreme Court, no person can be denied permission to reside while the application for citizenship is pending. Ms. Nasreen has been residing in Kolkata for sometime and felt at home. Ms. Nasreen is a South Asian. Universal Brotherhood and Human rights being India's civilizational values, Government of India should allow Ms. Nasreen to permanently reside in India in accordance with Indian law.
A small section of Muslims is agitated that Ms.Nasreen has authored books with text derogatory to Islam while she was in Bangladesh. We recall the story of a Jewish woman who always threw rubbish on Prophet Mohammed whenever he passed her house. When she didn't one day, Prophet Mohammed inquired why she didn't and learnt that she was not well. Prophet went to inquire about her health and wish her well. We note that many Muslim religious leaders had condemned the attack on Ms. Nasreen in Hyderabad.
I call upon the West Bengal Government to do everything to see that Ms. Nasreen can reside peacefully. The statement of the Chairperson of the Left Front in West Bengal stating that if there was any law and order problem, Ms.Nasreen could be asked to leave her residence in Kolkata is also very unfortunate. I also appeal to the Prime Minister of India to take speedy steps to grant her Overseas Citizenship by virtue of which she will have life time Indian Visa.
With warmest regards,
Yours truly,
Gopal Sengupta
Canada
CC:
| Shri Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee |
| Chief Minister, West Bengal | 
| | | | | Editorial
Govt should clarify its
position on Taslima Taslima Nasreen, one of Bangladesh's most controversial writers, has reportedly been on the run in India after extremist Muslims of West Bengal demanded her expulsion from their country. She initially left Bangladesh in 1994 after huge street protests by Islamist extremists who decried her writings as blasphemous and demanded that she be punished for hurting religious sentiments. Originally making her way to India, she then spent a few years in different Western countries until she chose a couple of years back to return to the Indian state of West Bengal – a place she describes as 'closest to what I know as home'.
However, as it appears from the recent protests against her in Kolkata, the capital of the communist-run state, the government of the officially proclaimed secular India has been exposed to difficulties as regards providing her with a safe home. 'Mentally distressed', she is now reportedly hiding at a government residence in New Delhi under tight security. The union cabinet of India has reportedly reached a consensus to ensure her safety, while in parliament the Communist Party of India argued for granting her Indian citizenship and the Bhartiya Janata Party demanded that Taslima be granted permanent visa and asylum in the country. But we wonder what the government of Bangladesh, of which Taslima is a citizen by birth, is going to do about the issue. Otherwise critical of the past administrations of Khaleda Zia and Sheikh Hasina, the government of Fakhruddin Ahmed in this case has so far followed in the footsteps of its predecessors: maintaining complete silence – an opportunist position indeed – about an issue causing enormous embarrassment to the country across the world.
Taslima, an overtly atheist writer, proclaims herself to be a 'humanist', while boldly expressing her views about religions, particularly from the perspectives of women's rights, which many a faithful does not feel comfortable with. We believe many of her interpretations of religious propositions seriously lack sound political, philosophical and historical understanding of the religious texts concerned, while we have doubts about her contributions in advancing the feminist cause of the women she is apparently writing for, but we have no doubt about her democratic right, the inalienable right that is, to put forward her views on issues of public importance. In this regard, we also believe that it is the responsibility of a government in a democratic dispensation to protect the rights of every citizen in expressing their views – a responsibility the subsequent governments of Khaleda Zia and Sheikh Hasina failed to discharge, particularly in the case of Taslima Nasreen.
The non-partisan incumbents of the day, who made a pledge to us to work to improve on whatever democratic norms that political governments had practiced, should come forward to pave the way for Taslima to return home safely and provide adequate security to her here in Bangladesh. Most importantly, the government should make its position clear to the public, at home and abroad, on whether there is any official bar on her return to Bangladesh in the first place and whether the government is ready to provide her with adequate security if she returns home. If the government fails to do so, it will fail us, the citizens of the country, in our attempts to tell the world that we are not a moribund society incapable of accommodating dissenting views. This is a real test for a government, apparently comprising some highly educated individuals, in proving that they are capable of standing up to the basic democratic spirit of accommodating opposing views, particularly when they are tolerating many an obscurantist interpretation of religion by the obscurantist Islamists who oppose Taslima's right to put forward her interpretations of religion/s. | | |
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