After the cancellation of Salman Rushdie’s festival appearance, Taslima Nasrin attacks the growing ‘appetite for censorship’ in India which has prevented her own book launch.
The writer Taslima Nasrin has hit out at a “growing cancer” afflicting Indian society, identifying a increasing “appetite for censorship” after the second high profile literary event in less than a month was cancelled amid concerns over security.
“Writers and artists have become the soft targets of religious extremists,” she said. “The authority tries to appease either Hindu fanatics or Muslim fanatics in India. All the political parties have different agendas, but they have no agenda or intention to value freedom of expression. It’s a dangerous race, who can violate free speech more.”
A week after plans for the novelist Salman Rushdie to appear at the Jaipur literature festival were scrapped due to threats of assassination the author later judged to be fabricated, the launch of the latest volume of Nasrin’s autobiography, Nirbashan (Exile), at the Kolkata Book Fair was abandoned.
Nasrin fled Bangladesh in 1994 when Islamic extremists threatened to kill her, saying that she had made “objectionable comments” about Islam and the prophet Muhammad – which the author denies. After a decade in Europe she moved to Kolkata, where she lived until 2007, when she was forced into hiding after being attacked for being “anti-Islam” at a book launch in the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu.
The writer, who now lives in Delhi, was not due to be present in person at the launch of Nirbashan, but a protest from the All India Minority Forum still forced fair organisers to call it off. The Kolkata Book Fair did not respond to the Guardian’s request for comment, but explained to the Times of India that they “could not risk” it. “We were told by this group that the release might cause trouble inside the fair,” said spokesperson Tridib Chatterjee. When her publisher later organised a smaller release on their stall at the fair, protesters attempted to prevent it.
“You may wonder why the authority tries to ban me or ban my book launch,” said Nasrin. “They believe I am anti-Islam, and supporting me or allowing me entry to the country or the state or the city or the book fair would send a wrong message to the Muslim fanatics. They fear they would lose the Muslim vote. They do not want to take the risk of a single Muslim vote.”
The author believes “the appetite for censorship is growing in India”, she said. With Rushdie prevented by fears of violence from attending or even speaking via video link at the Jaipur event in January, Nasrin says we are witnessing “the disturbing victory of Islamic gangsters” in Jaipur and Kolkata. “I am wondering how to stop this growing cancer from spreading,” she said.
Like Rushdie, Nasrin also suspects her book launch did not represent a genuine security threat. “It was something cooked up,” she said, “as launching a book by a controversial author could have proved awkward for the fair and the government.”
According to Nasrin, intolerance is growing “because the government does not take action against intolerant fanatics and the fanatics are forgiven for whatever violence they commit in the name of religion … India needs to secularise the states, judiciary and educational systems. People need to learn about the principles of democracy, freedom of expression, human rights and humanism. They need to be enlightened. In the name of ‘Indian secularism’, irrational blind faith and the barbarity of all religions seem to be accepted and respected equally.”
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