Taslima Nasrin tore into the Mamata Banerjee government in an email interview to dna about the re-release of a fresh translation of her book Lajja by activist-writer Anchita Ghatak two decades after it was banned in Bangladesh and climbed the bestseller list worldwide. Insisting that Banerjee's TMC was no different from the Left Front government before she said, “Both the Left and the Trinamool Congress appease Muslim fanatics for Muslim votes. Both harass me to make them happy. While the previous government banned my book and threw me out of the state to get Muslim votes, the current one banned my book release at the Kolkata bookfair and even prevented my TV mega serial from being telecast.”
She was particularly criticial of the Sudipto Sen-led chit fund company Saradha Group routing money through Trinamool Congress Rajya Sabha MP Ahmad Hassan Imran to Bangladesh-based terror outfit Jamaat-e-Islami. “Imran is a founder member of terrorist organisation SIMI. That was enough for not letting him be a member of a political party. But he was made a Rajya Sabha MP by Mamata Banerjee. He helped terrorism to grow in Bangladesh using Saradha’s crores of rupees,” she said and added, “Bangladesh’s Islamic terrorist organisation is known to be anti-India. This is all happening on Mamata's watch”
At a time when many are calling the ISIS crisis unfolding over the Persian Gulf a clash of civilizations between the East and the West she disagrees. “I don't think it is a clash of civilisation between the East and the West. Actually it is a clash between barbarism and humanism, between irrational blind faith and rational logicality, between tradition and innovation, between past and future, between anti-modernism and modernism, between people who value freedom and people who do not,” insists Nasrin who adds, “When faith supercedes humanity, reason and rationality are choked to death. That's what Lajja described and that's what's happening in the Middle East too.”
Nasrin however admitted she would have written her Lajja differently today. “I would've worked with fewer incidents, written them out more elaborately instead of putting in so many and make it a tighter read.” The author-poet is however clear she wouldn't tone it down. The 52-year-old insists the plight of women hasn't changed. “If anything we find more and more instances of religion being used against women. 20 years after Lajja first came out, religion continues to bring out the irrational in human beings to the fore time and again. I had then said that religion should take a backseat and humanity with all its good values should come to the forefront. Today, I can't stress that enough.”
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