Author: Express News Service
Publication: The Indian Express
Date: January 6, 2008
URL: http://www.indianexpress.com/story/258206.html
Comparing her stay in Delhi to house arrest,
Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen has alleged that even visits by her friends
and relatives are monitored by the authorities. "This existence cannot
be called living," she has said in an e-mail titled "how I am surviving"
sent to her friends here. "What have I done to deserve this lonely existence
full of uncertainties and despair? I do not believe my writings have anything
to do with the incidents of November 21. If it had, then I would have been
allowed to return to Kolkata after I had removed the controversial lines from
my book Dwikhandito," she writes.
Copies of the letter were distributed at a
literary fair here today. Taslima has also questioned the justification of
the restriction on her movements in Delhi. "There have been no protests
or rallies against me in Delhi. So why am I being deprived of a normal social
life?" she writes. "I am not a victim of fundamentalism. I am a
victim of politics which appeases fundamentalism," she says. She claims
that she is not even aware of her present address. The letter ends with an
appeal. "India has in the past been a refuge for so many people. I am
one of them," she writes. "I long to be back in Kolkata."