Taslima Nasreen: The Captive Rebel (Part II)

 

“Fasir monche uthe jodi ektao dirghoswas na feli?

Golay dori porabar por o jodi bhoy na paoar duswahos hoy amar?” 

[ If, even the gallows of death fail to make me despair?

If I dare to stand unsubdued by fear, even as they fix the noose round my neck?]

Yes. Banished from her own country, threatened by those she knew as her countrymen, standing at the precipice of death, she dared to boldly declare these lines in the face of her sworn enemies.

Yes. A rebel she is – the finest and truest rebel humanity has ever seen. A rebel who dares to defy even death. And who doesn’t fear a fire that burns even death to ashes?

So, Taslima Nasreen, threatened by religious fundamentalists had to fee from her own country in 1994. For the next ten years, she moved across foreign countries, the US, France, Sweden and Germany, before she could finally seek residence in Kolkata, India in 2004. She had to wait for six long years before the Indian government finally issued her a visa to India.

She has recounted her memories in altogether 7 parts of her autobiography: 'Amar Meybela', 'Utal Hawa', 'Dwikhondito', 'Sei Sob Ondhokar', 'Ami bhalo nei tumi bhalo theko PriyoDesh', 'Nei kichhu Nei' and 'Baki Jibon', almost all of which raised tumults of controversies among the Muslim Fundamentalist factions and were banned in Bangladesh soon after their release.

However, back to the course of our story, the fifth part of her memoirs, 'Ami Bhalo Nei Tumi Bhalo theko Priyo Desh' accounts her experiences abroad along with the rootlessness, pain and deep longing for homeland that had haunted her as she moved between foreign countries. It recounts the experiences of a rebellious feminist writer, boldly holding up her nation with pride, honour and loyalty, even in the most challenging of times.

Nasreen lived in Kolkata from 2004-2007, even under continuous threats from Islamic extremists. However after an attack on her in Hyderabad in August, 2007, she was put under house confinement in Kolkata for 3 months. Such a daring figure as Nasreen, wasn’t it obvious that she was never to know peace in her life? On 22^ndNovemver, 2007, with the Islamic fanatics gone berserk with protests, threats and bounties on Nasreen’s life, the then WB government thought it better to send her away to New Delhi and hole her up in a room at an undisclosed location to save her and the nation from communal riots.

How ironic, isn’t it – that the one who fights for humanity is shut off from human association, the one who struggles for the equal rights of men and women to sunshine, air, forests, mountains, and rivers is denied of the same? The one who rebels against the depravity of patriarchy, religious fundamentalism, capitalism, freedom of speech, is left to rot in darkness and loneliness for months.

The 103 pages of her poetry collection ‘Bondini’ expresses the excruciating pain, agony, loneliness and homesickness of the exiled writer, with a most evocative language and imagery. Her wrath against religious fundamentalism, her love and hence born rage at India, the country she has time and again looked upon as her own country, her frantic fury and helplessness at her forced imprisonment and the silencing footsteps of death approaching her every moment of that suffocating life – everything has found language through her beautifully revolting poems.

With fuming despair at humanity, she has written, “Tumio amar moto, tumio opekhha koro manusher/Ondhokar jhepe ase, manush asena” (You are just like me; you too, lie in wait for humanity/ Darkness reaches us, but human beings, never.)

With immense pain and grief, the writer “resolves to dedicate all her tears in hope that maybe one day, the fertile lands of Bengal will give birth to atleast one true human being”.

As a reward for her relentless struggle for humanity, this daughter of Bangladesh was denied the passport to her motherland, even as her mother and later father, lay on their deathbeds.

In 2008, when Nasreen was awarded the Simone De Beauvoir for her writing on women’s rights, she staunchly refused to go to Paris to receive the award, saying that “it was more important for her to stay in India and carry on the fight for her freedom at that juncture”.

Things, however, went awry. Captivated or rather cooped up in a small crevice with nothing but lizards, ants and insects as company, shut off from the world for months, this dauntless rebel soon fell seriously ill from stress, anxiety and loneliness and had to be hospitalized for a few days. Finally, she was forced to leave India on 19^th March, 2008 and move to Sweden.

In 2015, she had to move to U.S.A. for security reasons and currently she is staying there. Her visa to India is surviving on temporary extensions. Though she is desperately seeking permanent residence in the country where she believes “her soul lives”, the Indian government ironically is yet to take decision on this matter.

And this is, in short, a feeble attempt to narrate the story of the defiant little girl who grew up into such a strong, tireless, truth-seeking fighter. Nasreen is the legend, who will live on as an undying flame crackling and scorching every threat to the dignity, purity and beauty of humanity for ever and ever.

As long as there is life, there is humanity in this rotten civilization, every tiny dust of Bengal will enshrine the one who could so candidly say of her death as:

 

“Amar jodi mrityu hoy aj rate, keu kichhu bolo na,

Shudhu kothao kono shiuli gachher neeche ekta epitaph pute dio,

Koyek bochhor dhore lekha amar epitaph

Sada kagojer gaye sada ronge, sojotne lekha epitaph”

[Speak not a word if I happen to die tonight,

Just place an epitaph somewhere, beneath some shiuli blossoms,

The epitaph of my few years,

The epitaph inscribed with immense care,

Inscribed in white background, in invisible ink.]

 

Source: wikipedia.org

  ~ Arundhati Rakshit