Against Attack on Taslima Nasreen and ABVP's Fake Concern

Poster Against Fatwa on Taslima

Condemn the ‘Fatwa’ and Death Threats Against Taslima Nasreen!

By issuing death threats against the feminist writer Taslima Nasreen, a certain tiny fundamentalist fringe in the minority community is playing into the hands of the Hindutva fundamentalists.

Taslima Nasreen is a writer who has resisted every brand of communalism and patriarchy. She is critical of the hypocrisy and double standards of all religions towards women. Devout Muslims may have differences over her views on Islam – but despite these differences, Taslima is in fact an ally in the struggle against RSS’ communalism and genocide in India. Instead of mobilizing people to strengthen the resistance to communal assaults, fake encounters and state terror faced by minorities, the fundamentalist leaders with their ‘fatwas’ are trying to whip up hatred, violence and frenzy against this lone woman who wields no weapon but her pen and her strong sensibility for gender justice. Shame on them! By doing so, they are doing great injury, not only to the cause of women’s freedom and freedom of expression, but also to the anti-communal movement in the country.

11 August Leaflet

If Taslima Had Been Born In Gujarat, ABVP, RSS And Co. Would Have Raped And Killed Her…As They Have Done With Hundreds Of Other Muslim Women in the 2002 Genocide !!!

ABVP piously defending ‘freedom of expression’ and condemning the attack on Bangladeshi novelist Taslima Nasreen by MIM MLAs in Hyderabad. Pot calling the kettle black, indeed!

ABVP and the Sangh Parivar to which it belongs, uses force and violence to ‘ban’ women from wearing jeans, celebrating Valentine’s Day, and marrying outside the caste or community. They themselves recently assaulted a young student of Baroda University for his paintings which, according to them, ‘insulted Hindu sentiments’. Be it the freedom of women or the freedom of artistic and creative expression: who can be a worse enemy to these sentiments than ABVP and its Hindutva fundamentalist brothers?

Taslima Nasreen is a novelist who has been the victim of a witch-hunt – both in her native Bangladesh as well as in India – for her bold writing against every hue of fundamentalism. She is familiar with the many ways in which religion is used to silence women – and she is outspoken in her scathing critique of fundamentalist attacks on women’s freedom by any and every religion. It is indeed a shame that India’s UPA Government has been vacillating on giving Taslima citizenship, and that even the CPI(M) Government of West Bengal which swears by the rights of women and freedom of expression, banned her novel Dwikhandita. Taslima’s fiction and autobiography does not slander Islam as a religion – it critiques the hypocrisy of patriarchal society. Dwikhandita too exposed the patriarchal attitudes of many prominent Bengali male writers – and it is these writers who prevailed on the WB Government to ban the novel. The physical attack on her by AP MLAs from MIM in a public function deserves the highest condemnation.

Women who have written boldly of their sexuality and have dared to expose patriarchal hypocrisy have always borne the brunt of bans no matter in what society they live. Just as women who marry outside the community are accused of violating the ‘honour’ of the community, women who write about the patriarchal double standards of their own society or community towards women are attacked as being enemies of the community. Akka Mahadevi, the 12th century woman poet-saint who wandered nude and declared “People/male and female,/blush when a cloth covering their shame/comes loose…/

To the shameless girl/wearing the White Jasmine Lord’s/light of morning,/you fool,/where’s the need for cover and jewel?”; Kate Chopin, the American novelist who died young after facing social ostracism for her novel The Awakening; the courtesan Muddupalani’s poem Radhika Santwanam which was banned by British colonial rulers and Indian nationalists alike for its explicit expression of woman’s desire…the list is endless. British writer Virginia Woolf spoke of how every woman writer has to grapple with and kill the ‘Angel in the House’ within herself, which is a self-censoring voice that tries to stop her from telling the truth about society and about men in particular. Taslima Nasreen is a proud member of this community of women writers who have dared to refuse self-censorship.

But Taslima can well do without defenders like the ABVP! Will ABVP tell us what they have to say about VHP women’s wing leader Krishna Sharma who defended wife-beating in the following words: “Don’t parents admonish their children for misbehaviour? ...a wife must act keeping in mind her husband’s moods and must avoid irritating him...if she learns to stifle her screams, the matter will remain within the four walls of the house. Otherwise every house will become a ‘Mahabharat’.” (Tanika Sarkar and Urvashi Butalia ed. Women and the Hindu Right, 1995, p. 332-3)

Will they tell what they have to say about VHP leader Babu Bajrangi who has abducted 900 Hindu women who married Muslims or Dalits, and forced them to remarry within their community?

What about the Gujarat genocide of 2002 in which hundreds like Bilkis Bano were raped, their unborn children dragged from the womb and killed?

If Taslima Nasreen had been born in Gujarat rather than in Bangladesh, isn’t there a good chance she too would have been raped and massacred by the RSS? If ABVP has the guts, they should call Taslima Nasreen to a public meeting and ask for her views on BJP-RSS and the Gujarat genocide!