BJP MP to Centre: Facilitate Taslima’s return to Kolkata
Times of India | 18 March 2025
Kolkata: BJP's Rajya Sabha MP Samik Bhattacharya on Monday urged central govt to facilitate the safe return of novelist Taslima Nasrin, who now stays in Sweden.
Bhattacharya, who raised the issue during zero hour, said: "Taslima Nasrin wants to return to Kolkata. West Bengal is known for women's liberation, and the same city ousted her. Let her come back to Kolkata."
Sources said Nasrin had been in touch with a few politicians in Bengal and discussed the issue of her return to India a month ago.
"Nasrin wrote a novel named ‘Lajja' about the atrocities on Hindu minorities in Bangladesh. The situation compelled her to leave Bangladesh, and she got shelter in Kolkata. There was an unfortunate incident orchestrated by a former Congress neta. Both Congress and Left Front forced Nasrin to leave the country," Bhattacharya said.
After leaving Bangladesh in 1994, Nasrin lived in exile in western Europe and North America for 10 years. In 2004, she was granted a renewable temporary residential permit by India and moved to Kolkata. However, fatwas were issued against her, and picked up steam in Kolkata in 2007. She stayed at an undisclosed location in India for some months and finally moved to Sweden in 2008.
In a Facebook post, hours after the issue was raised in Rajya Sabha, Nasrin wrote that former CPI MP Gurudas Dasgupta raised the issue of her return to Kolkata in Parliament in 2007, and it was raised again after 18 years.
"I never imagined that I would be exiled from Kolkata. While Dasgupta protested my ouster, none uttered a word after that. One of the television channels aired a mega-serial based on my novel ‘Dushhamay'. It was eventually stopped," she wrote.
"Left Front leaders talk about women like Rosa Luxemburg and Clara Jenkins. Surprisingly, they don't utter a single word about Nasrin. The Congress leader who was behind her ouster joined Trinamool and is a member of Parliament now," Bhattacharya said.
Trinamool's Lok Sabha chief whip and senior lawyer Kalyan Banerjee said: "Law and order comes first, everything else comes later. And those who are speaking, are they truly Hindu? They are all pseudo-Hindus."
TMC spokesperson Kunal Ghosh said BJP was raising these issues to distract from topics like fake voter lists and communalism. "Trinamool will not fall for it," he said. Regarding Nasrin's post, Ghosh said everyone had a phone and the right to post on social media.