Split

by Taslima Nasrin

  I was still a little unconvinced; I had heard it took a lot of money to fight such cases. Nahid spoke to Rabiya Bhuiyan and the latter agreed to fight my case pro bono. Rabiya Bhuiyan was a well-known lawyer and had been the minister of law at one point of time. Such a renowned barrister was going to fight my case for free against the publishers of Uchit Jabab for the copyright of my book, and I had to do nothing! Obviously, there was no longer any reason for me to refuse. Although it was not long after I had agreed to sue that I noticed a spike in Nahid’s requests regarding my involvement—from insisting I go meet the legal team at least once, to small payoffs for the clerks to get files to move, to coaxing me to have a meeting with Rabiya Bhuiyan regarding the case.

  It was at the meeting that I learnt that no one else had lodged a case regarding the copyright of books in Bangladesh before me. Apparently everything from bricks, wood, mangoes to dried mango candy had a copyright, except for books. Legally, no matter who held the rights to a book the royalty due to the author did not reach the right person unless the copyright was registered. Bhuiyan sent me to Sher-e-Bangla Nagar to the copyright office of the democratic government of Bangladesh to register my copyright. I put in the application on 16 March and received the final documents on 15 May, after which Bhuiyan wrote the petition herself and began proceedings for my case at the sessions judge court in Old Dhaka. The subject of the petition was the prohibition of the publication, distribution, further editions and sale of the fake book. The logic was simple: I had not permitted any author to copy the entire text of Nirbachito Kolam verbatim. They could quote from me if they wished to or if they were looking to critique my work then they could write entire critical tomes like what people like AS had done. The abuse directed at me in the name of critique did not really bother me as much. This was nothing new and such offensive pieces appeared in magazines like Inquilab quite frequently. Besides, I was perfectly aware of who was abusing me and why they were doing it, so their words barely made a dent any more, not physically and most definitely not mentally. But how could they steal my entire book?

  Nahid’s excitement with the case was palpable throughout the proceedings and it reached such a crescendo that I had to relent and accompany her to the court on the day of the verdict. A horde of men in fez caps were all over the court premises. Mokaddas Hossain was present too, along with his followers and his lawyer Korban Ali. Barrister Korban Ali had made it his mission to sacrifice his life to battle me. Whenever there was a report against me in the newspapers one could expect to see Ali’s name all over it. He was clearly the perfect person for the defence, absorbed as he was in bringing me to justice.

  What happened in the end was deeply unfortunate. The judge did not decide in my favour and my plea was rejected. Mokaddas Hossain did not stop at bringing out a fresh new edition of Uchit Jabab, he also began distributing pamphlets containing the appeals made by both parties and the responses to each appeal. One of the pamphlets went thus:

  My dear Muslim brothers and sisters. Beware of this demon in human disguise!! Mokaddas Hossain, the author of Uchit Jabab, gave such an answer to that Islamophobic man-hater Taslima Nasrin, who was awarded the Ananda Puraskar by those non-believing foreigners, that her sharp pen has lost all its edge . . . it has left her the recourse of resorting to fake legal cases against Uchit Jabab. Uchit Jabab has been re-edited, updated, extended . . . and published with more irrefutable rational rejoinders—henceforth, below every column of the controversial Nirbachito Kolam you will find the most appropriate and jaw-breaking right answers!

  In response to my petition, barrister Korban Ali had this to say on behalf of the defence:

  The defence would like to reassert that they in no way have written their own book with any intention of plagiarizing the plaintiff’s repulsive, obscene, uncouth, antisocial, filthy, anti-religious, anti-national book that is replete with tasteless sexual scenarios. Rather, they have in a tried and tested manner made every attempt at giving a fitting reply to such an impudent piece of writing through a stringent critique. The plaintiff has confused the copyright office into granting her the copyright of this distasteful book even though the publication and distribution of such a book is a punishable offence under Bangladesh Penal Code article 292. In the guise of literary production the plaintiff is attempting to push civilised society to barbarism in a despicable ploy to engender anarchy. In comparison the defendant is, first and foremost, a leading writer and publisher who had earned great renown during his student years for his academic performance and whose reputation as a diligent student earned him government scholarships from an early age. In his Madhyamik School Certificate examination he had created a record of sorts by earning five letter marks, besides star marks and scholarships. He passed ISC with a first division from the renowned Dhaka College and while studying in Dhaka University came to be associated with publishing. He started writing in 1987 and at present he is the successful author and publisher of a number of books like the Niharika Madhyamik Geography Guide for classes nine and ten, and the Niharika Madhyamik General Science Guide papers 1 and 2. His guidebooks for English and Bengali literature for classes six to eight have been certified by the National Syllabus and Textbook Board. He has forever been preoccupied with ensuring the progress of our people by guiding children and young adults down the right path through a constructive and creative literary education. At present as the assistant general secretary of the Creative Writers’ Association of Bangladesh he is dedicated to the betterment of many talented and innovative writers of the country.

  The other defendants too were quite highly regarded. They opined:

  The plaintiff has not shied away from ridiculing Islam in many of her columns and has even gone so far as to give distorted explanations of things that have been said in the holy Quran and the hadith. She has mocked the holy Quran Sharif, claimed that it was composed by a patriarchal man and has called its followers and readers barbarians and stupid. So dangerous is the plaintiff’s recklessness that the democratic government of Bangladesh had to recently confiscate her book Lajja. What started initially in Sylhet has now brought together all conscious citizens of the nation in a united demand to jail her and put a stop to all her activities within seven days, or risk a strike in various cities of the country.

  In her various columns the plaintiff has repeatedly spewed unnecessary insults and obscenities against men in the name of women’s liberation, in order to stir up antagonism between the classes. Not just that, she has not even shown any respect for women in any of her columns and has constantly tried to pollute them. She has repeatedly tried to insult and undermine the Muslim family, society and individuals as part of her nefarious plan. The plaintiff has attempted to push her readers to confusion again and again by challenging naturalized laws and social norms, and destabilizing acceptable boundaries of taste and civility through repeated discussions of all manner of lewd and explicit sexual matters. From the very beginning till the end of Nirbachito Kolam she has spewed hatred against the social system that Muslims have established over hundreds of years, and without bothering to show people the right direction she has attempted to lead society to a realm of naked shamelessness and dissolution, with some imaginary liberated female figure at the centre of it all.

  She has crudely attacked a man’s divinely ordained right to marry more than one woman and as an alternative has suggested women be similarly permitted to have multiple husbands. Not only is such an arrangement a sin for a woman, from a sociological perspective such a suggestion will surely jeopardize the paternity of all men and reduce human life and human civilization, congealed over centuries, instantly to rubble. The plaintiff herself is a key player in this conspiracy. In the same book the plaintiff has argued in favour of the independence of the vagina. The vagina is nothing but a body part through which human reproduction, and by extension the fate of human society, is regulated. Her demand for its independence had directly challenged Allah’s natural laws. By committing such an act she has fallen
from grace and according to the holy light of the Quran she must be executed just like the cursed apostate Salman Rushdie.

  There was nothing I could do against Uchit Jabab and the book continued to be sold with impunity. The learned men of the court did not rule in my favour and consign the book to the only fate it deserved. I was made into a demon in human guise while the defendants became messengers of Allah, the greatest creatures in the universe. There was no way I could hamper the business of those so blessed by Allah, especially since His blessings had never quite found their way to me.

  Despite the continued vendetta against me in Uchit Jabab, I had no time to waste on lamenting about what was right and what was not. I wished to spend my time in other, better ways, by doing something for others. Since I could not always manage to do this the way I wished to, I had to write instead to make up for it. Not that I could always successfully express all my tumultuous thoughts and anxieties in writing either! And how could I not be anxious when women were being dishonoured almost every day, when they were being raped or killed. I wrote about things happening in the country that moved me deeply, made me cry, made me think, filled me with outrage or stirred me with pain. I did not write deep philosophical tracts or information-laden essays; most of my writings were immediate emotional responses and not results of intense research. They were printed as columns in daily newspapers, which were made into paper bags for holding nuts the day after, or in the weekly magazines which found their way to the garbage bin after the week was over. There, fragments and stray sentences from my daily columns mingled with rotting old things . . .

  A magistrate named Shahida was murdered by another magistrate, Liyaqat, because the former had refused the latter’s proposal of marriage. They were friends and Liyaqat had tried to use that as leverage to force her hand. He had simply assumed that since he was a man she was going to listen to every demand he had to make. Shahida had perhaps refused because she had been an educated self-sufficient woman wishing to make her own choices. But Liyaqat the man had not found that to his liking. If he did not show off the strength of his body, his knife and his manhood, how would everyone know that he was a man! If Liyaqat had managed to marry Shahida he would have killed her slowly, bit by bit, and no one would have noticed her gradual erosion. They would have clucked their tongues and remarked on what a stunning couple they had been. Liyaqat was a man among men and he had done what men were supposed to do. He had murdered a woman in cold blood.

  The papers had a field day over how magistrate Shahida was having an extramarital affair and her child was not her husband’s, as if all of that was enough justification for what Liyaqat had done. She could have been having an affair. It was entirely someone’s personal choice who they were going to allow to access their life and their body. When living women barely had any freedom it was too much to ask the same for someone who was dead.

  In Basabo a woman named Nilofer was murdered by her husband. The husband had financial strength and, above all, government support, so he was let off. No matter how big a thief, robber, ruffian or murderer, government backing was enough to throw them a lifeline and help them across. The government had constructed a strong bridge of loopholes for all its devotees, a bridge far sturdier than the Pul-e-Siraat of Allah.

  Members of the Women’s Council were stridently demanding the death penalty for Khuku. Munir had murdered his wife and he was scheduled to be hanged but the Council was demanding that Khuku be hanged too because she had a loose moral character, she had had an affair with Munir despite being a married woman herself. When the Women’s Council began protesting at the court demanding death penalty for her, there was nothing left for me to do but hide my face in shame. Why did she have to die? What had been her fault? She had not been involved in the murder. She had a disabled husband who used to abuse her, a lover who had tricked her, and this helpless girl was vilified by the entire nation and put in jail. Khuku had only been in love with Munir, she had not committed a crime. Was love a crime?

  A female passenger on a ferry from Patuakhali was raped. Not by robbers or hooligans on the ferry, or drunk co-passengers. She was raped by the five ansars employed to ensure security for all passengers of the ferry. They forced the twenty-year old Musammat Begum to their cabin and raped her. Even a ferry full of passengers did not deter them from carrying out such an act. How could the ansars—the word ‘ansar’ means volunteer—who had been employed by the government dare to rape the very passenger they were sworn to protect? How could those in charge of security become the biggest impediment to it? None of the men were punished, obviously.

  It was amazing that we lived in a country where both the prime minister and the leader of the opposition were women. Did they never receive the reports of rapes being committed everywhere? Or did it not make any difference to them? Was rape something so amusing for them that they never felt incensed by it? Despite there being a female prime minister in charge of the country, incidents like the murder of housewives, rapes, kidnappings, acid attacks, dowry-related violence and child marriage were commonplace. There were still a plethora of laws prevalent all geared towards suppressing women. If a woman failed to understand the plight of other women then how was she going to serve the people? If those in power failed to stand by the oppressed then for whose benefit had they assumed the mantle of authority? For the rich, the despotic, the self-centred and the sinner?

  A gang rape committed by five men was not unheard of; such things were happening everywhere, in villages, towns, cities, roads, ferries, trains, boats and ships. No one was punished for such crimes; rape was not a punishable offence in the country. The top brass and their friends would rather issue fatwas against women and celebrate such declarations with pomp and show. In a country where they could confiscate someone’s passport for writing on behalf of women, was it any surprise that it was the politics of fatwas that ruled above everything else? Nothing surprised or shocked any more. We were used to noticing, reading and promptly forgetting startling news in the papers. Nothing caused us grief and there was very little of our conscience left to fall like whiplashes on our backs. We were all aware that when protectors took on the mantle of rapists it left us with very little power to bring them to justice.

  Faces in power changed periodically but their natures, irrespective of their genders, remained the same. The girl who was raped by the ansars on the ferry in Patuakhali was labelled a prostitute. As if her being a prostitute legitimized the ansars’ right to rape her. Since she was a prostitute the perpetrators were declared innocent. If it had been a pavement dweller instead, the same argument would have been repeated; since she lived on the pavement, raping her was perfectly all right. Rape was made into the victim’s fault and it was usually alleged that she had provoked the man into committing rape. That her fluttering eyes, her needless smiles and her suggestive clothes were all responsible for it. Such thinking found heavy traction too in society.

  A girl should smile when she wishes to, do exactly as she pleases and wear whatever she wants—why should she have to face rape because of these reasons? I believe in sexual independence. Like other kinds of freedom this too is crucial for human existence. Why should one tolerate someone else trying to control one’s body? A beggar, a prostitute or a housewife, if a woman says no then no one has the right to touch her. Thanks to our judicial system rapists often get off easily and time and again the state belittles a woman’s fundamental rights as a citizen. In this case, I was convinced that despite such incidents if the women of Bangladesh still failed to unite for a mass movement demanding life imprisonment as the minimum punishment for rape, then there was no recourse left for these senseless women other than surrendering to rape when it happened to them.

  I had a regular column called ‘Aamar Meyebela’ (My Girlhood) in Jai Jai Din, where I had once written: ‘. . . even in a bus, a conductor makes a woman travelling on her own sit with another woman, or at least with an old man or a young boy. Being a man himself even a conductor knows how men
are. So he wishes to feel safe by seating the woman beside someone who is infirm or not yet an adult.’ The reason I was reminded of an old article was a letter. I usually received hundreds of letters every day and never had time to read all of them. But sometimes some letters managed to shock, or make me think, or even make me cry.

  Mou, a girl from Komilla, wrote to me, ‘In your latest column at one point you have mentioned that old men are infirm. Not that I doubt it but this reminds me of an incident that had happened to me when I was very young which I want to tell you about. Not because I want to redress it—sometimes you just want to share things with someone. I was in class six. An old man came to our suburban town to put up performances of Shakespeare’s plays and raise money. I was to sing a song in one of them. One night after the rehearsals he offered to drop all of us off in his jeep. I was the last one he dropped—perhaps because I was the youngest and also because he wanted to take advantage of us being alone to press his hand against my vagina. Anxious that something more was going to happen I kept counting the seconds we spent in his jeep that night and wishing we reach my house faster.