Prose gets branded as porn when women write on desire: Taslima Nasrin

KOZHIKODE: India is not an intolerant country though there are quite a few intolerant groups, exiled Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasrin said at the Kerala Literature Festival here on Saturday.
She didn't have to elaborate. Anyone wanting to enter the venue where she was having an interaction with Malayalam poet and critic K Satchidanandan had to run a gauntlet of metal detectors and overzealous cops in mufti, even as a police posse with bomb squad in tow secured the premises fearing protests from certain fringe groups.
Indian secularists are more eager to fight Hindu fundamentalists without realising that extremists of all hues are dangerous and pull society back, Taslima said.Recalling how she was forced to leave West Bengal by the then Left government “to appease some Muslim fundamentalists“, she said, “I think the Left in India is not Left enough. Instead of taking action against troublemakers, the Left government forced me leave the state“. To a question from Satchindanandan on rising intolerance in the country, Tasleema felt that the Indian constitution and laws did not discriminate between communities but hastened to add that, “killing a person on the suspicion that he ate beef is cruel because it is an affront to his right to eat food of his choice. Fundamentalists everywhere are against plurality“.
The author of Lajja said her novel is a faithful representation of Bangladesh after the demolition of Babri Masjid in 1992.
“Many Hindu shrines and shops were attacked and Hindu women raped,“ she said adding that even now the plight of minorities in Bangladesh has not improved.
In Bangladesh a woman is not supposed to write about herself.
“You are not permitted to write about your body or your desire. When a woman writes about her body it is pornography but when a male writes about the same thing it is literature,“ she quipped.
Taslima asserted that she will continue the good fight against patriarchal values and forces that oppose secularism and democracy, revealing that what keeps her going is when ordinary women come and tell her that her books have been an inspiration and strength for them.