Nasreen forced to censor herself

FURTHER evidence – not that it’s needed these days – that Muslims are now controlling what we can read, watch and hear comes in a story in, inter alia, The Times.

Taslima Nasreen, the 45-year-old feminist author, National Secular Society hon. veep and former doctor, has been forced to self-censor.

The Times story says she is to “rewrite her autobiography” (an autobiographical novel) to “appease” Muslim fundamentalists.

The controversy over her book forced her to leave Kolkata last week, although she says that the religious references that fundamentalists are making such a fuss about are sourced from “universally accepted” books on Islamic history.

Now she says that the “controversial lines” in the book (called Dwikhandito, which means “divided”) relating to Islam will be excised.

Forced to speak from a secret location, she told The Times, “The book was written in 2002, based on my memories of Bangladesh in the 1980s, during which time secularism was removed from the Bangladesh constitution. I wrote the book in support of the people who defended secular values. I had no intention to hurt anybody’s sentiment.”

She adds, “I have done what I have never done in my life. I have compromised even in a secular India.” Now she hopes she will be able to “live peacefully” in India.

Prashant Mukherjee, her publisher in Kolkata, would not disclose the exact text or the nature of the sentences that Islamic clerics have chosen to be outraged by, but has said two paragraphs would be deleted, according to The Times.

Mr Mukherjee said that the Muslim-born author, who was whisked to a safe house near Delhi by federal security officers, had instructed him not to reveal the content for fear of stoking communal tensions further.

“I can tell you that we thought it to be historical and true and that it would not give rise to any controversy,” he said. “It’s nothing extraordinarily poisonous against Islam but these people are hypersensitive.”

The publisher is not releasing any more copies of the unedited book, which has sold more than 30,000 copies in the original language since it was published in 2003. It has also been translated into Hindi.

Nasreen was hounded out of Kolkata (formerly Calcutta) after widespread violence during a strike by a collection of minority groups demanding the cancellation of her visa. She had been living there since 2004, when she returned from Europe.

“The Indian Government has pointed out that the author is a guest in the country, which is home to 140 million Muslims, and should behave like one,” says The Times. “However, it has promised to host her at least until her visa expires in March.”

Nasreen fled her homeland of Bangladesh in 1994. Her other works, including the 1994 novel Lajja (“shame”), have provoked extremists to call for her execution for “blasphemy”.