Nearly 20 years after being forced to leave the city due to protests over her controversial novel “Dwikhondito,” exiled Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasreen returned to Kolkata on Friday. Nasreen remarked, “I am really liking it here,” when she touched down at the capital city of West Bengal’s Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose International Airport.
The author-activist is making her first public appearance in Kolkata since 2007, when she fled Bangladesh ten years prior and was forced to leave the city due to protests against her memoir. In 2003, the Bengal government, which was then run by the CPM, banned her book on the grounds that it offended religious sensitivities. The 63-year-old currently holds a long-term residency permit in Delhi.
Nasreen is scheduled to attend a demonstration against fundamentalism at Rabindra Sadan tomorrow. Renowned writer Shirshendy Mukhopadhyay and Bengal Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari are also expected to attend.
The author, who was previously accused by the Bangladeshi government of defaming Islam, will attend a civic reception in her honor before reciting some of her poetry and participating in a conversation, according to the organizers.
In an earlier interview with PTI, she described her return as a “personal homecoming” and stated that she had always longed to return to Kolkata and had never left voluntarily. “I was forced to leave Kolkata by the West Bengal administration at the time; I never went voluntarily. But I never gave up on the hope that I would come back someday. Governments changed year after year, but the door stayed closed.
A political controversy was triggered by the news of her coming. Akhruzzaman, a Trinamool MLA, asserted that the writer’s repeated criticism of Muslims is the only reason the “double-engine government” is embracing her.
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