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Salaam Taslima

It was in the fitness of things that Taslima Nasreen came to Mumbai. It was also in the fitness of things that  her first public appearance, anywhere on the Indian sub-continent after her enforced exile from her home  country, took place in Mumbai. It was also in a way inevitable that it was Akshara Prakashan — a sister 
 company of the eveninger, Mahanagar  —  that originally invited her here. No other publishing group had  extended such an invitation in six years of her exile as a Bangladeshi writer. No other group had with as  much aplomb published her works from Bengali into another Indian language (Marathi). Tributes, therefore   to Akshara Prakashan.
But who were Taslima’s hosts in Mumbai? Individually speaking, was it Ashok Shahane, the translator of her works into Marathi, or Nikhil Wagle, the firebrand editor of Mahanagar, or Sajid Rashid , or the Shabana Azmi-Javed Akhtar team or us at Communalism Combat?  Was it was all of us together or each one of us on our own?
Within the space of a short, seven days the colour and complexion of the event had changed. It was slated to be a literary function, hosted to release the Marathi rendering of her Bengali novel Shodh (Phittam Phat in Marathi). But with the postponement of that event due to the ill–health of Taslima’s father and the opportunity that delay gave to some Muslim obscurantist groups to issue death threats if she dared to step on Mumbai’s soil (‘we will burn her alive’ was the cry given by one such group) it became a challenge for secular, anti–communal groups that simply could not be ignored.
The public meeting in Mumbai on the evening of March 6, 2000, at the Mumbai Marathi Granth Sanghralaya, took place under the aegis of Akshara Prakashan, Communalism Combat and the Progressive Urdu Writers’ Forum. It was emotionally charged. The hosts on that day have been involved in lesser or more significant measure with protesting the gradual tearing apart of Bombay’s cosmopolitan life witnessed as never before in the events of December 1992–January 1993. These protests necessitated drawing attention, repeatedly, to the slow poison of prejudice that facilitates such breakdowns of civil life, preventing meaningful healing taking place afterwards.
The effort meant being open to the charge  that even talking about prejudice brings —  the question of ‘balance’. The India that we experience today, is held ransom by the same forces that ruthlessly demolished a 400– year–old mosque and, under cover of that act, unleashed unspeakable acts of violence on certain sections before and after. It is an India that is not free to dream. It is an India of vigilante squads run by the culture police who are trying to tell us what we are, how to think and what our girls should wear. In the grips of this bullying violence, when individuals and groups speak up, we have all been faced with this underlying question, suspicion even. In short, where do you, or would you stand when it came to Muslim communalism? Hosting Taslima Nasreen and extending support to her radical and dissenting ideas provided an apt occasion to lay these ghosts to rest.
Taslima’s visit to Mumbai therefore symbolised a real breakthrough. She had to be provided Z security due to the threats that preceded her arrival. The state in this case responded with aplomb and she came. She spoke to us. She told us how when she had first penned Lajja, her account of what a Hindu family in Muslim–dominated Bangladesh went through following the same event, the demolition of the Babri Majid on December 6, 1992, she too, in her home country had been quizzed angrily about the balance. Why did she, for instance, not balance the plight of that Hindu family who’s tragedy she witnessed and penned with what had happened to Muslims in India? She also told us how the BJP–RSS combine that was generous enough to grant her a visa to this country demanded her arrest when she defended Deepa Mehta’s right to make her film, Water.
The content of her response is much the same as what ours has been. In India, what we have lived through and what we continue to experience every single day, in frightening measure, is an erosion of our democratic space and the right of all individuals, regardless of community to exist as equal. In India, the defence of democratic space and democratic rights will inevitably result in persistent confrontation with the forces of majoritarian communalism, Hindu communalism. Just as in other parts of south Asia and the sub-continent the battle will take on different forms. Within the specificifities of the struggle however, one thing is clear. Intolerant voices that have no space for democratic dissent, whether they come from the majority or the minority, need at all times to be unequivocally condemned. 
Nineteen days before Taslima’s visit to Mumbai, on February 13, 2000, Asghar Ali Engineer, a doyen of the anti–communal struggle and a Bohra reformist battling tirelessly for democratic rights of the Bohra people was assaulted, his home and office vandalised. Another example, if any were needed, that even within our societies the rights of the minority within the minority need to be constantly protected.
Seven years back when we launched Communalism Combat we had outlined the raison d’etre of the effort to our readers: to fight both majority and minority communalism because they are two sides of the same coin. The events of the last month, whether it was the attack on Asghar Ali Engineer, or the imperative behind Taslima’s visit, is a vindication of that resolve.