Sikdar pushed her cigarette packet towards me. In a society where a woman smoking was an unthinkable act she used to smoke in public all the time, on the road and in restaurants and bars, never bothering about what others were saying about her. I was offered alcohol too, but not being used to it, I had to rush to the washroom to throw up after only a couple of sips. I was careful to hide this from the rest, afraid that Sikdar was going to scoff and say, ‘Little girl, you can’t even hold down a little alcohol!’ She had already said to me, ‘I had assumed you are a tough girl! But you are as shy as a housewife! I can’t understand why the mullahs are after someone as meek and innocent as you!’ She pointed at the sari I was wearing and said, ‘Why do you wear the sari? Is it even a dress? Can you fight the cap-wearing goons in a sari? One pull and the entire thing unravels! You have to grow out of it!’ Hearing me express my concerns over the protest marches by the mullahs, Sikdar stopped me and remarked, ‘You are so scared! You are a scared little girl! When they wanted to demolish Shoparjito Shadhinota I went to TSC alone to guard it. I was ready to face whoever would have come. None of the scoundrels dared to come anywhere near it.’ She was looking at me and her eyes were awash with compassion. ‘Do you know judo or karate?’
‘No.’
‘You have learnt nothing in life!’
‘What use will it come to? I am not going to go down to the field and fight them!’
‘Oh, I understand, you fight with your pen. But they have not just taken up pens, have they? They have taken up much more and they are flexing their muscles. They are showing you how masculine they are. You don’t go out in fear. Is that even justifiable? If you can knock out at least two or three of them, if you can tear off their caps and robes and make them run on the road naked, they will never dare utter your name again.’
I was well aware that I could never be as courageous as her. There was only one Shamim Sikdar in Bangladesh and as unique an individual as she was, not everyone could be like her. Fear, shame, slander, there was nothing she cared about and I felt blessed to have been in the company of such a daring and audacious woman.
~
My columns were being published regularly in Khabarer Kagaj, Samikkhan, Bhorer Kagaj, Ananya and Jai Jai Din. I had been writing non-stop since my resignation. Jai Jai Din, edited by Shafeeq Rahman, was the most popular weekly around that time. Rahman had lived in London for years before returning to Bangladesh a few years back and starting the journal. During Ershad’s rule he was once stopped from entering the country and sent back from Dhaka airport. After Ershad was overthrown he had come back and settled in rather well. I used to write in Jai Jai Din because of his request but I was not very satisfied with it. Rahman would simply expunge any mention of religion from whatever I wrote.
In fact this was a common trend in most papers and journals of the time—it was fine as long as I was writing against communalism but I was not allowed to attack religion. Previously such restrictions had not been there and I could write whatever I wished to and no one edited lines from my articles. But I could sense that my freedom to write my thoughts was gradually being regulated and the editors were removing lines and words at will without seeking my permission, presenting the distorted product to the readers. The serialized essay titled ‘The Vedas, the Bible, and Women’ I was writing for Bhorer Kagaj was abruptly discontinued because of this. They had no problem with anything else I wanted to write as long as it was not about religion. Religion was tearing the country apart but one was not allowed to criticize it.
As it is the only reason there was so much demand for my articles was because my articles increased sales; even though I could not be sure how many of these editors truly believed in what I was writing none of them had the courage to terminate my services and put their circulation at risk. Saju Ahmed, the editor of the magazine Robbar, had requested me for an article once, which I had obliged and he had printed with a lot of care. He sent a representative of his with a letter asking me to write for his magazine regularly. Even though I did regularly write for many, I had to turn him down since I had no time to give to another column. Strangely enough, a few weeks later he published a special issue of Robbar on me with my photo on the cover and more photos inside. Every single line of every single article of the special issue was replete with nothing but abuse directed at me. I had never known abuse could be so dirty, insults could be so cruel, disrespect could be so terrible and jealousy could be so dangerous.
Ishaq Khan, R’s friend, had written an article, not about my writing but about my sexual life—how many men I had slept with, when, where, how, including detailed descriptions of everything. It included accounts of my many lovers in Mymensingh even before I had met R, all of whom I had also slept with according to Khan. He had mentioned the advertisements I had put when the personal advertisement section was first started in Bichitra back during my college days, only so he could invent a few obscene sentences that he wanted to pass off as wordings from my advertisement. The readers were obviously not going to go through issues of Bichitra from sixteen years ago to verify if I had indeed written such an advertisement.
Looking at his innocent and unassuming appearance most people would not have imagined the sort of malice Ishaq Khan harboured within him. His goal in life had been to become a writer of short stories but he had been unsuccessful thus far. Thanks to the efforts of Saju Ahmed, Ishaq Khan’s salacious assassination of my character did exceedingly well with the public and brought him instant fame. The issue had to be published thrice due to public demand. Papers would have sold whether I was being praised or vilified—Robbar, which used to sell 2000 copies, sold nearly 20,000—so the gloves came off! The magazine was filled with nothing but denigration and the failed writer tasted success for the first time.
As it was there were too many publications in the country that had popped up like mushrooms—dailies, weeklies, bimonthlies, monthlies, those published every two or three months, and so on. The ones with low circulation began running stories about me to up their sales, with my photographs on the cover and largely imaginary fiction inside. I don’t recall speaking to a single journalist but long interviews of mine were published and jokes about the fatwa became routine. Rumours were doing the rounds that Habibur Rahman wished to marry me and I had said yes. While I was being driven out of my mind by a 50,000-taka fatwa swinging over my head, I was made into a laughing stock, a source of entertainment, in the papers.
What Motiur Rahman Chowdhury had wished to do via his report on the fatwa proved once and for all how intensely I was hated in my own country. But when the intelligentsia made statements against the extra-judicial fatwa and numerous people began writing about it both in Bangladesh and abroad, fearing that there was a genuine risk of a cohesive public opinion forming in my favour, the maulana Habibur Rahman began claiming that he had issued no such fatwa; even if he had, he claimed it had been revoked long ago. Obviously, he pretended to not be the sort of person who randomly issued fatwas, even though there had been a successful strike in Sylhet—called by him—in support of the fatwa only a while ago. Attempting to brush the term under the carpet Habibur Rahman launched a new vocal campaign accompanied by incendiary public addresses. A press conference was organized on 21 October at the Cicily Restaurant in Dhaka by ulemas and mashaikhs of all levels demanding the ‘immediate confiscation of all works of the notorious Taslima Nasrin, her arrest, and exemplary punishment’. At the press conference a statement was made in front of the journalists.
The name Taslima might mislead one to think of her as a Muslim. But in her beliefs, her creed and her mentality she is anything but. She has been constantly waging a war against Allah by making the most vile observations vis-à-vis the Quran, the Prophet and the Islamic sharia . . . Because of her shameless, arrogant and objectionable writing obscenity, debauchery and immorality have spread like an epidemic both in the state and abroad. This is severely detrimental to the image of Islam and the Prophet. This woman has referred to specific vers
es of the Quran—sura Al Imran, sura An-Nisa, sura Al-Baqara, sura Al-Hujurat, sura Al-Waqi’a, sura Ar-Rahman—and has ridiculed and distorted Allah’s dictums. Similarly she has mocked the Prophet using the most terrible of words and has decried man’s faith in religion as a falsity. She has gone on to claim that religion turns humanity inhuman and insults and denigrates women. She has declared that she holds the great Allah and His messengers responsible for oppression of women, inequality between the sexes and all social troubles. She has heaped scorn upon all believers and has claimed that she holds nothing but contempt for women who adhere to the Prophet’s hadith. Sexual excesses and depravity are considered sins in all faiths but Taslima has repeatedly sought to encourage society to embrace free sex and dissolution and to that end she has written, “I believe a woman can sleep with ten men and still remain chaste.” It is not difficult to envisage how terrible the consequences of such limitless opinions and their free proliferation in society can be. It is a truth universally acknowledged that if a person is to be found guilty of treason, if they are found to be openly engaging in conspiring against the state, then their only possible punishment is death. Similarly if a person with a Muslim name ridicules Islam, the holy Quran, and the great Prophet, if they seek to bring disruption to society by their misrepresentations, then they will be considered heretics and according to the sharia their only punishment is death.
After the address the Sahaba Sainik Parisad proudly declared that through conferences, a protest rally and a half-day strike, all undertaken in Sylhet, they had presented the government with a set of three demands:
1. Immediate arrest of Taslima Nasrin; 2. Immediate confiscation of all her work; and 3. Exemplary punishment for her. These reflect what is in the hearts of the faithful populace and the government has to accept these demands. The government has already impounded Taslima’s Lajja, and now it is time to do the same to her other more harmful books and do justice by the Parishad. We are also going to generate a larger popular movement to demand the institution of capital punishment for offences committed against Islam, the holy Quran and the great Prophet.
And it was already happening, I could see that with my own eyes. The movement was not simply growing, it was slowly taking on monstrous proportions.
There was a rally coming down the road. Not a few hundred people, there were a few thousand, marching from the Kankrail crossing to Shantinagar. Sitting at my window I could clearly see the banner they were carrying, ‘We demand the noose for Taslima’ written across it in bold letters. They were coming down the road shouting ‘Naara-e-Takbeer Allahu Akbar’. Mother was reading suras from the Quran. Her muttering froze mid-sura seeing me standing at the window; in a flash I was dragged away to the safety of shadows. Unsure whether suras were going to help she rushed to her prayer mat and bent over in namaz hoping her entreaties would reach Allah’s ears and He would save me from public fury in time. The rally stopped at the Shantinagar crossing. A few uniformed policemen had been posted there and they were not letting the rally pass. The roars of ‘Naara-e-Takbeer’ shook the entire building.
Rallies such as this were a regular fixture from Baitul Mukarram to Shantinagar. Each time, I stayed frozen in fright, my heart about to leap out of my chest. All I could wonder was what would happen if the mob managed to ever find their way to my apartment. The two policemen sitting at the door were hardly going to be able to stop them. With each passing day the rallies were swelling like an angry river.
~
Sheikhul Hadis was a well-known name. He founded a new committee, the Committee for the Prevention of Seditious and Heretical Activities, and muftis and maulanas signed up in hordes. They organized huge protest rallies with gigantic banners, especially after the Jumu’ah prayers on Fridays. They did not stop at protest marches only and presented a deposition to the Speaker of Parliament.
Respected Speaker
Bangladesh Jatiya Sangsad
Sangsad Bhavan
Shere Bangla Nagar
Dhaka
Janaab,
We humbly request:
It is common knowledge that the people of Bangladesh are deeply religious and people of all communities in this country have always been aware and vigilant about preserving communal harmony among each other. But a few confused factions have assumed that hurting the religious sentiments of others is a sign of progress and have continued with their devious plan of attacking people’s religious principles as well as the unity among the different communities.
A notorious writer named Taslima Nasrin has repeatedly hurt the religious sentiments of the people of Bangladesh via her books, novels and columns in various magazines and journals. On the other hand she is also engaged in a well-planned and cunning campaign of propagating hate and strife among communities.
By writing Lajja, a novel of nefarious intentions full of lies and misinformation, Taslima Nasrin has sought to smear the history of communal harmony in this country, hurt the image of Bangladesh in the international arena, and instigated some national and international communal groups to harbour ideas of revenge against Muslims. However, the government has only banned Lajja and not taken any other legal steps, despite there being numerous instances where Nasrin has made many comments which are contrary to the independence, sovereignty and cohesion of Bangladesh, veering dangerously close to treason. The patriotic people of Bangladesh are deeply outraged and hurt by the government’s attitude regarding the matter.
Even though according to the Constitution and the rule of law, hurting a citizen’s religious sentiments and causing discord between people of different faiths is a punishable offence, since there are no specific guidelines regarding a speedy and strict system of punishment for actions against the state and religion, traitors and heretics are brashly carrying on their misdemeanours and instigating social unrest and dissonance.
Nearly 90 per cent of the people of Bangladesh are Muslims. Through her various books and writings Taslima Nasrin has repeatedly shown disrespect towards their holy Quran, the hadith of the Prophet and the sharia of Islam. Despite vocal protests from religious groups all across the country against her sacrilegious activities the government has mysteriously continued to toe the line of inaction by taking refuge in weak laws. Consequently, most pious Muslims of the country have lost their faith in the government and the judiciary.
Taslima Nasrin has not only targeted our religion, contrary to the value systems prevalent in our society she has stridently attempted to upset social stability by encouraging debauchery, free sex, premarital and extramarital sexual relationships, and with exaggerated stories of patriarchal oppression of women in relationships. Her writing is no better than pornography, whose only purpose is to drive our youth towards depravity and moral decay.
In such a scenario, mindful of the feelings of the patriotic and religious citizens of our nation, we strongly demand: 1) laws that will guarantee the death penalty alongside other stern punishments for all traitors and heretics, 2) immediate arrest and exemplary punishment of Taslima Nasrin, and 3) immediate confiscation of all her objectionable literature.
(Sheikhul Hadis Maulana Azizul Haque)
Convener, Committee for the Prevention of Seditious and Heretical Activities
Saat Masjid, Muhammadpur, Dhaka
An almost similar letter was sent to the home minister too.
Janaab, we are writing to you outraged and in despair regarding a notorious writer named Taslima Nasrin who has insulted and injured the beliefs and sensibilities of twelve crore patriotic and devout citizens of Bangladesh . . .
~
There was a price on a writer’s head in Bangladesh—especially in Europe and America this was huge news. After the fatwa fracas with Salman Rushdie the media abroad was more than eager for such a story. A fatwa had been declared on a writer because of her writings, Muslim fundamentalists were demanding her head, for which protest rallies were being held. People across the world read this news and support began to pour in from many quarter
s, all in solidarity with a writer’s freedom of expression. Human rights activists, women’s rights activists and writers held demonstrations in front of the consulate offices of Bangladesh in many places across Europe and America. The prime minister’s office too received numerous appeals from various foreign organizations requesting security for me as well as appropriate actions against the radicals.
I received a request to write a co-editorial for the New York Times. Writing a few sentences in English was fine, but to write an entire article in a foreign language was an entirely different thing. Neither could I turn it down and say it was not possible for me. As if to make the impossible happen, Farid Hossain, a journalist for Associated Press, came forward. Having been tasked by foreign newspapers to handle news related to me, Farid Hossain had already been to my house quite a few times. A highly educated journalist and an unassuming, warm and courteous man, Hossain did not simply visit me for news, he also stepped up as a friend in need. I wrote the co-editorial in Bengali and Hossain translated it into English. Since getting transferred from Dhaka Medical to Maulavibazar in Sylhet, whenever Dr Rashid visited Dhaka he used to stay at my house. Arrangements would be made for him in my study and he would, much like an older brother, shower me with advice and also reply to all the letters I received from various foreign organizations.
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