Author: Nirmala Ganapathy
Publication: The Indian Express
Date: February 20, 2004
URL: http://cities.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=76397
Author Taslima Nasreen says being
called a ''prostitute'' by a writer in West Bengal was the ''best award''
she had ever received.
''Whenever a woman has fought the
patriarchal system, she has been called a prostitute. I have really hit
the patriarchal system,'' she says.
Three months after her book Dwikhandito,
third part of her autobiography, was banned by the West Bengal government,
she is still a very angry woman. Angry with the state government for banning
her book and angry with the authors who backed the ban.
''This time the West Bengal government
didn't prove to be any different from the Bangladesh government. It's funny.
In Bangladesh it's a pro-fundamentalist government but both behave the
same way,'' she pointed out. The state government imposed the ban on the
ground that certain passages could spark off communal riots.
Sporting a trimmer, slimmer look,
Nasreen said she was taken aback when Indian authors backed the ban. ''Progressive
anti-fundamentalists asked for the ban...I was surprised. They were good
friends. They have destroyed their own ideology which was for freedom of
speech,'' she said.
Nasreen, who was in Delhi to launch
the Hindi translation of the fourth volume of her autobiography, Woh Andhere
Din (Those Dark Days), published by Vani Prakash, said the candid accounts
of her sex life must have offended the West Bengal literary set.
''I just wanted to tell the truth.
First with Lajja and then with the autobiography. I didn't hide anything.
I did crimes...I had relations with men. I wrote about the relationships
because it was the truth,'' she said.
Nasreen, who has lived in exile
from Bangladesh since her book Lajja raised a storm and led to fatwas,
added: ''These writers who are big followers of the patriarchal system
are furious that a woman wrote about sex, they find it very unusual. They
think only men can write about women's bodies and about women...''
This is one topic on which Nasreen
can't say enough. ''I have shown how I have suffered from one relationship
to another. They said very good about my other books which were on my childhood
and youth. But when I became an independent person, I wasn't good anymore.
They like to see women as weak and oppressed.''
Nasreen also put in an appearance
at the World Book Fair and was mobbed for autographed copies of her other
books.
Nasreen's autobiography is coming
out in seven parts. The first three parts have been banned in Bangladesh
and the third in India. But she has posted the first two parts on the Internet
and considers it her own little victory against censorship.
She is aware of her reputation for
courting controversies but is quick to point out that the war she is waging
is not against religion but against the way religion is used to subjugate
women. And this gets her into the thick of controversies.
''I criticise religion because I
want women's freedom,'' she says. ''I wrote 28 books about oppression of
women. I always talk about women's issues. But then the problem starts.
Whenever I say religion doesn't give freedom to women, the controversy
begins...''
Three days ago the fourth part of
Nasreen's autobiography was released in Bangladesh. Nasreen is expectantly
waiting for the abuses to start pouring, all over again.
