Controversial author leaves India

INDIA: THE CONTROVERSIAL Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen, confined for almost four months to a "safe house" in India's capital New Delhi, finally left the country earlier this week for medical treatment abroad.

"I am at Heathrow airport now, waiting for a connecting flight," Nasreen (45) told a friend in India's eastern city of Kolkata (formerly Calcutta) from London on Wednesday. She declined to elaborate on her plans, however.

It is believed that the gynaecologist turned author's eventual destination, which for security reasons is being kept secret, could be Canada, France or Denmark.

Nasreen's situation has been compared with that of British author Salman Rushdie.

She was forced to flee Bangladesh in 1994 when radical Muslims accused her of blasphemy over her novel Lajja (Shame).

The bestselling work, translated into several languages, depicts the life of a minority Hindu family in Bangladesh who are persecuted by the majority Muslim community.

Nasreen had been seeking permanent residency in India, where she moved four years ago after spending time in Europe and the US. But India, fearing a backlash from the country's 140-million-plus Muslims, stalled her request for asylum, only providing the openly atheistic writer with six-month visas.

Last November Nasreen was forced to flee Kolkata, which she had adopted as her home as the majority speak her native Bengali, after receiving death threats from radical Indian Muslims.

Thereafter, she was forced into a peripatetic existence by the security agencies, who shifted her from secure location to secure location. She was not allowed visitors and her movements were severely curtailed.

"I can't take it anymore. I will die if I continue to live like this," she said recently. "I am losing my eyesight, my heart is damaged.

"I have to survive. I have to immediately get good treatment because I am not even getting cardiologists here."

She added that the months in isolation had also sent her blood pressure soaring.

In an indictment of India's perceived cultural openness, Nasreen said it was beyond her imagination that "such a thing could happen to a writer" in a secular democracy.

"I was determined I would not leave this country. When they saw it was pointless trying to destroy my mind, they attempted to destroy my body," she said.

India's main opposition Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party has accused the Congress Party-led government of forcing Nasreen to leave because it was worried about losing Muslim voter support with just over a year to go before national elections.

Asked if she would return to India after treatment, Nasreen said she would love to return, especially to Kolkata, provided she could live a normal life, as it was the "closest for her to home".

© 2008 The Irish Times

This article appears in the print edition of the Irish Times