Almost sure of securing a resident permit in India, Taslima Nasreen says even if Bangladesh allows her return, she wants to spend the rest of her life in her second home — India.
“I want to live in India….where else can I go! I am a citizen of Europe and a permanent resident of USA but I chose India to live because of the cultural connection,” Nasreen told bdnews24.com over phone.
“Even if Bangladesh allows me to enter now, I will still choose to live in India for the rest of my life.
“In the last 20 years, I have made more friends here in India than in Bangladesh. If you live with an ideology, relatives are not important. What is important is to live with people who share your beliefs,” she continued.
“Bangladeshi publishers and intelligentsia cut off their contacts with me. So my relationship with Bangladesh has been broken,” Nasreen said as she enlarged on h preference to stay put in India.
She had applied for a residence permit and India’s home ministry granted her the same type of visa but only for two months beginning Aug 1.
Then Nasreen met Home Minister Rajnath Singh and has been assured of a long-term residence permit now.
“I am not sure but the home minister has promised that he will make my residence permit long term. If he doesn’t change his mind, I am hopeful that I will get a long-term visa.” Nasreen said.
Living in exile for 20 years now, she also claimed then Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi had supported her on a couple of occasions when she was forced to exit West Bengal in 2007.
Modi is now India’s Prime Minister.
“Not only in 2007, during the election time also in one of his interviews he spoke against the injustice done by the West Bengal government to me,” the controversial writer further said.
“Because some Muslim fanatics agitated and went on the rampage, I was thrown out of the state in 2007 by the Left government which would flaunt its secular credentials.
“A lot of people who believed in human rights and freedom of speech, including Modi-ji, have spoke against that,” she said.
In fact, those who led the violent campaign to oust the writer from West Bengal, have now been given important positions by the Trinamul Congress government .
At least two of them have become state minister and MP on Trinamul nominations.
The Mamata Banerjee-led government also prevented controversial author Salman Rushdie from attending a book launch in Kolkata last year because Islamic radicals had opposed Rushdie’s entry to Kolkata.
Many leading Bengali writers say Taslima Nasreen’s eviction and refusal to allow Rushdie’s entry into Kolkata have seriously dented the image of the former capital of British empire as the cultural capital of South Asia.
Source: Bd news24
