5th June 1998 Comment by Taslima Nasrin
From: Taslima Nasrin, c/o Warren Allen Smith, 31 Jane Street (10-D),
NewYork, NY 10014 (212) 366-6481
To: Op-Ed Page Editor,The New York Times, 229 West 43rd Street, NewYork, NY 10036
Newspapers and journals in the United States often refer to India as being "the largest democracy in the world. I, for one, am not favorably impressed by its so-called “democracy.”
My native country of Bangladesh, which once was a part of India, is also called a democracy. The government of that nation is controlled by religious fundamentalists. In 1993 a fatwa was issued against me and a monetary reward offered to anyone who would kill me. Several thousand zealots marched through Dhaka demanding my death. My 1992 novel,
“Shame,” about the destroying in India of an ancient mosque in Ayodhya, and my several volumes of poetry were burned. I was ordered to be hanged.
As a result I was forced to hide in my own country until, with the help of some western governments, I was able to flee and seek asylum in Sweden where I now reside, thanks to its humanistic leaders.
Although Bangladesh is proud to call itself a democracy and accepted most of the clauses of the U. N. Human Rights Convention, its rulers still refuse to cancel the fatwa that calls for my execution. My “crime” is not that as a physician or as a poet or as a novelist I have killed anyone. My crime is that my country’s “democracy” objects to the outlook which is shown in my writing. I have views which are different from that of the majority. My views, admittedly, are seen as being blasphemous in their eyes. Freedom of expression, in short, is a term totally unknown to this “democratic” Muslim country.
When I asked “the world’s largest democracy” to allow me entry, I was turned down. In fact, my application for a visa has been refused more than seven times by India’s “democratic” government. The reason, I have been informed unofficially, is that the government does not want to lose votes of the Muslim minority community in the next elections.
Put yourself in my position. I have been forced to leave my native country, a democracy, because I speak openly about what I think is wrong.
Meanwhile, I am desperate to see my mother who has just been diagnosed with advanced colon cancer and liver metastasis. The
religious-fundamentalist “democracy” of Bangladesh will not allow me to return to be with her at the end. Were I to attempt a return now, my mother, my family, and my friends could well suffer the spectacle of seeing me tried once again, found guilty once again, and hanged by the neck in the public square before my thirty-sixth birthday.
Some matters are more cruel than A-bomb tests, particularly when “democracies” are involved.
Dr. Nasrin, the Bangladeshi poet-novelist-gynecologist who has taken refuge in Sweden, currently is visiting in Manhattan.