Content:

(i) Public Statement by Forum For The Protection
of Free Speech and Expression (9 February 2008)

(ii) SAHMAT Press Statement on Taslima Nasrin (13 February 2008)

(iii) Taslima lives somewhere in Delhi, Hussain in Dubai (Jawed Naqvi)

(iv) Why is Taslima Nasreen a prisoner? (Indira Jaising)

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 Public Statement by Forum For The Protection of Free Speech and Expression

February 9, 2008

At a time when India is projecting itself on the
world’s stage as a modern democracy, while it
hosts international literary festivals and book
fairs, the Government of India, most mainstream
political parties and their armed squads are
mounting a concerted assault on peoples’ right to
Free Speech.

It is a matter of abiding shame that even as some
of the world’s best-known writers were attending
the Jaipur literary festival and prestigious
publishers were doing business at the World Book
fair in Delhi, the exiled Bengali writer Taslima
Nasrin was (and is) being held in custody by the
Government of India in an undisclosed location
somewhere in or around Delhi in conditions that
amount to house arrest. Contrary to misleading
press reports stating that her visa has been
extended, her visa expires on the 18^th of
February, after which she is liable to be
deported or remain confined as an illegal alien.

Taslima Nasrin is only one in a long list of
journalists, writers, scholars and artists who
have been persecuted, banned, imprisoned, forced
into exile or had their work desecrated in this
country. At different points of time, different
governments have either directly or indirectly
resorted to these measures in order to fan the
flames of religious, regional and ethnic
obscurantism to gain popularity and expand their
’vote-banks’. Every day the threat to Free Speech
and Expression increases.

In the case of Taslima Nasrin it was the CPI (M)
and not any religious or sectarian group who
first tried to ban her book Dwikhondito some
years ago. The ban was lifted by the Calcutta
High Court and the book was in the market and on
bestseller lists in West Bengal for several
years. During those years Taslima Nasrin lived
and worked as a free person in Calcutta without
any threat to her person, without being the cause
of public disorder, protests or demonstrations.
Ironically, Taslima Nasrin’s troubles in India
began immediately after the Nandigram uprising
when the people of Nandigram, mostly Dalits and
Muslims, rose to resist the West Bengal
Government’s attempt to takeover their land, and
tens of thousands of people marched in Calcutta
to protest the government’s actions. Within days
a little known group claiming to speak for the
Muslim community asked for a ban on Dwikhondito
and demanded that Taslima Nasrin be deported. The
CPI(M)-led government of West Bengal immediately
caved in to the demand, informed her that it
could not offer her security, and lost no time in
deporting her from West Bengal against her will.
The Congress-led UPA Government has condoned this
act by holding her in custody in Delhi and
refusing, thus far, to extend her visa and
relieve her of her public humiliation. They have
once again played the suicidal card of pitting
minority communalism against majority
communalism, a game that can only end in disaster.

Inevitably, hoping to make political capital out
of the situation, the BJP is publicly shedding
crocodile tears over Taslima Nasrin, going to the
extent of offering her asylum in Gujarat. It
seems to expect people to forget that the BJP,
VHP and RSS cadres have been at the forefront of
harassing, persecuting, threatening and
vandalizing newspaper offices, television
studios, galleries, cinema halls, filmmakers,
artists and writers. Or that they have forced
M.F. Husain, one of India’s best-known painters,
into exile.

Meanwhile, in states like Chattisgarh, Andhra
Pradesh and Karnataka, away from the public glare
of press conferences and television cameras,
journalists are being threatened and even
imprisoned. Prashant Rahi from Uttarakhand,
Praful Jha from Chattisgarh, Srisailum from
Andhra Pradesh, P. Govind Kutty from Kerala are a
few examples. As we speak Govind Kutty, who is on
a hunger strike in prison is being force-fed,
bound hand and foot. Scores of ordinary people,
including people like Binayak Sen have been
arrested and held illegally under false charges.

We the undersigned do not necessarily agree with,
endorse or admire the views or the work of those
whose rights we seek to defend. Many of us have
serious differences with them. We agree that many
of them do offend our (or someone else’s)
religious, political and ideological
sensibilities. However, we believe that instead
of making them simultaneously into both victims
and heroes, their work should be viewed, read,
criticized and vigorously debated. We believe
that the Freedom of Speech and Expression is an
Absolute and Inalienable Right, and is the
keystone of a modern democracy.

If the Indian Government deports Taslima Nasrin,
or holds her as an illegal alien, it will shame
and diminish all of us. We demand that she be
given a Resident’s Permit or, if she has applied
for it, Indian citizenship, and that she be
allowed to live and work freely in India. We
demand that the spurious cases filed against M.F.
Husain be dropped and that he be allowed to
return to a normal life in India. We demand that
the journalists who are being illegally detained
in prison against all principles of natural
justice be released immediately.

Signed:

Mahashweta Devi, Arundhati Roy, Ashish Nandy, Girish Karnad

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 Press Statement on Taslima Nasrin

SAHMAT

13.2.2008

It is a matter of great anxiety that the exiled
Bengali writer Taslima Nasrin is still being kept
in an undisclosed place by the Government of
India. It is learnt that she is not allowed any
visitors and cannot move freely. Her visa expires
on the 18^th of February, after which she is
liable to be deported. While we may or may not
agree with the views or the work of Taslima
Nasrin, we believe that her right to freedom of
speech and expression is inviolable. We demand
that her visa be extended with immediate effect
and she be provide a congenial atmosphere to live
and work.

Ashok Kumari

For

SAHMAT

SAHMAT

8, Vithalbhai Patel House, Rafi Marg

New Delhi-110001

Telephone-23711276/ 23351424

e-mail-sahmat vsnl.com

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 Taslima lives somewhere in Delhi, Hussain in Dubai

by Jawed Naqvi

Dawn, February 11, 2008

Raj Thackeray doesn’t like Bihari migrants in
Mumbai to practise their way of worship, for
example their native Chhat Puja or water worship.
His mentor Bal Thackeray had similar issues with
ethnic Tamil immigrants. That was way back in
time, before he turned his benign gaze upon the
Muslim and Christian communities of Mumbai even
if they happened to be Marathi speakers.

Narendra Modi in Gujarat too doesn’t like Muslims
or Christians in his state. In fact he doesn’t
like secular Hindus either. Renowned artist MF
Hussain whose studio in Ahmedabad was destroyed
under Modi’s watch now lives in exile for fear of
his life and danseuse Mrinalini Sarabhai is
stoically coping with the full blast of the
state’s ire. Any Hindu would face it in Gujarat
if they spoke for an equal law for the minorities
as Sarabhai did.

But minority groups are not far behind in
championing their own narrow mindsets. They have
played havoc with Muslim women’s rights. They
have hounded Bangladeshi fugitive writer Taslima
Nasrin, on at least one occasion physically
assaulting her and threatening to have her killed
for alleged blasphemy. The state has done one
better. It has put Taslima Nasrin under an
undeclared house arrest. Women writers who spoke
to Taslima say she fears she would be deported.
Her visa expires on 18^th February. The government
it seems has falsely claimed that it has been
extended. If the virtual house arrest is the
state’s way of keeping her secure from rightwing
Muslim rabble-rousers who could harm her, it is
tantamount to the cure being worse than the
ailment. If Taslima has written something
blasphemous, as perhaps she has in one of her
books, a democratic state should be able to
intervene to deliver fair justice without
compromising on its commitment to either free
speech or religious freedom.

The idea of India as the founders envisaged it
was to have such a complete democracy in this
country that it would give every single citizen,
or a fugitive, or the casual visitor each and
every freedom conceivable in a civilised world.
That idea was enshrined in the Constitution of
India. It remains the only bible the state is
authorised to consult to resolve a substantive
difference of opinion it may have with the people
or to end a dispute about a matter of principle
between them.

The founders neither desired nor offered room, in
their delicately crafted idea of a nation state,
for religious, regional, linguistic or ethnic
mindsets to be entertained by the state’s
representatives. This of course did not mean that
they had failed to observe a few of these slants
blossoming and flourishing in their time, but
these were not given any space in what we
generally know as public affairs. Of course the
founders were aware that with a surfeit of
regions, religions, languages and ethnicities
co-existing cheek by jowl there would be
differences or disputes that needed to be handled
with care and special firmness.

Most of the biases India has inherited are
chronic and cultural in their origin with a
history of at least a few hundred years. In some
cases, tendencies bequeathed by the hidebound
caste system go back a few thousand years in
history. All these have been found difficult to
wish away. However, other forms of mistrust
evolved meanwhile from modern classes and social
groups thrown up by colonial and post-colonial
economic quests. Consequently, India is currently
divided between the worldview cherished by 20 to
30 per cent of its citizens who are destined to
enjoy the fruits of its economic policies and the
70 to 80 per cent of those who are condemned to
wait with fading hope for their space under the
shining sun since 1991. The tussle of the rich
and the have-nots acquires the form of irrational
prejudices too which erupt occasionaly like in
Raj Thackeray’s sermon to the Biharis who are
otheriwse a poor hardworking lot.

The main political parties who had hitherto lived
by taking money from the rich and the vote from
the poor with the promise to protect them from
each other are being compelled to consider more
surgical methods to keep the 30:70 apartheid
intact. Since in a democracy 70 per cent can
easily vote out all policies that favour a mere
30 per cent, a method had to be evolved to break
the brute majority of the have-nots. The staple
so far has been to woo votes from among the 70
per cent by playing up their parochial
prejudices. Muslims make a large and readymade
vote bank here. Hindus are a lot more difficult
to weld together as a voting lobby. We know of
’AJGAR’ and ’MY’ factors in Indian elections,
representing Ahir, Jat, Gujar, Adivasi and Rajput
in parts of north and western India and
Muslim-Yadav in Bihar. These are all
predominantly Hindu groups but usually at
loggerheads with each other. Yet the overwhelming
majority of India’s Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists
and Christians belong to the 70 per cent of the
have-nots. This should ideally pit them against
the 30 per cent predominantly Hindu interest
groups who are ruling the roost. Such a
democratic coup would be unacceptable to the
Indian state as it has evolved. Therefore, Messrs
Thackeray and Modi are assigned a pivotal role to
sort out the mess.

The imageries of Taslima and Husain are useful in
this respect. Taslima, it is said, has hurt
Muslim sentiments with her blasphemous writings
and Hussain, we are told, has hurt Hindu
sentiments with his supposedly offensive
paintings of goddesses. But Taslima has been in
Kolkata for years after she wrote Dwikhandita,
the evidently objectionable book. So what has
happened suddenly to bring her alleged apostasy
into the mainframe of Muslim ire? The answer
comes from a direction that is surprising. It has
been suggested by a growing number of respected
intellectuals that the communist government in
West Bengal, hitherto regarded as the repository
of secular virtues, is quite a lot responsible
for targeting Taslima. Her criticism of the
violence, which communist cadres had unleashed on
the impoverished Dalit and Muslim residents of
Nandigram is said to be a key reason for
Taslima’s current misery. So it is a sad day
indeed that the left also appears to have
acquired the methods of “bourgeois” rule it had
so far fought tenaciously. The left’s apparent
culpability in the Taslima affair, and its
willingness to use Muslim communalism even though
it has been the target of Muslim obscurantist
groups in the past, is a new development in the
equation.

The anger, if not complete disillusionment, with
the left seems to have outraged large swathes of
left sympathisers and ordinary democratic
opinion-makers across India. Implied in their
criticism is the call to the left: stop behaving
like the Congress and the BJP. Eminent writers
such as Mahashweta Devi, Arundhati Roy, Ashish
Nandy and Girish Karnad have called a major
meeting this week to demand the release of
Taslima Nasrin and the safe return of Hussain
from Dubai, among other issues. But the most
interesting message in this meeting to my mind
will be a word of caution to the Left Front to
distance itself from the brand of politics that
breeds mediaeval prejudices.

The writers have taken measures of course to
ensure that the BJP gets no succour from their
ire against the Congress and the left. They
released a statement on Sunday ahead of a public
meeting on Wednesday. It says: "Inevitably,
hoping to make political capital out of the
situation, the BJP is publicly shedding crocodile
tears over Taslima Nasrin, going to the extent of
offering her asylum in Gujarat. It seems to
expect people to forget that the BJP, VHP and RSS
cadres have been at the forefront of harassing,
persecuting, threatening and vandalising
newspaper offices, television studios, galleries,
cinema halls, filmmakers, artists and writers. Or
that they have forced MF Hussain, one of India’s
best-known painters, into exile."

The writers also raised an alert about the little
known incarceration of journalists in states like
Chattisgarh, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka. "Away
from the public glare of press conferences and
television cameras, journalists are being
threatened and even imprisoned. Prashant Rahi
from Uttarakhand, Praful Jha from Chattisgarh,
Srisailum from Andhra Pradesh, P Govind Kutty
from Kerala are a few examples."

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 Why is Taslima Nasreen a prisoner?

by Indira Jaising

Rediff News, February 12, 2008

Taslima Nasreen’s incarceration, by the
government of India is now an established fact.
In a recent article in the Times of India, she
describes herself as a ’prisoner’. The truth
seems to be, she is being held as a detainee
under Section 3 of the Foreigners Act 1946.
Strange as it may seems, the government does have
the power to hold her in custody under Section
3(e) of the Foreigners Act. However, one would
have thought that for a person lawfully in the
country, as Taslima is, no such powers could be
exercised.

The power is meant to deal with foreigners who
commit crimes and are for some valid reason,
wanted or needed by the law for extradition or
deportation. Taslima is not in that situation and
yet she has been in the custody of the government
of India since November 2007. Taslima has
committed no crime nor has she violated the terms
of her visa. On the contrary, crimes have been
committed against her.

Her deprivation of liberty is therefore not
capable of any rational explanation. Perhaps, the
only explanation that could be offered is that
she is being held in custody in her own interest,
as a measure of protection against criminal
elements who assault her for her writings. The
question then would be does providing security
require her to be in custody at an unknown
destination?

She has been in the country for a long time now,
with no security problems. Why then this sudden
concern for her security, such that it warrants
her being at an unknown location? Could it be
that the idea of the detention is to make her
wait till her visa expires and then deport her?
Or perhaps to tire her out to the extent that she
leaves ’voluntarily’. Both options are deplorable.

Taslima has a right to know well in advance
whether she is being granted an extension of her
visa or not, to enable her to make an effective
representation against a possible deportation.
She and the rest of the nation are being kept in
the dark about her legal status in this country.

She has been prevented from disclosing her
whereabouts or from seeking legal advice. It is
true that she has not taken any legal action
against her situation, but she is after all, in
this country on a visa which can be cancelled at
any time and she can be deported. And she lives
on hope that the Indian government will honour
its commitment to her and grant an extension.

It is not often understood that foreigners too
have constitutional rights, one of most important
of them being the right to life and personal
liberty. Clearly Taslima’s right to life and
liberty have been violated by her detention.
Unless the government has good reasons to justify
her detention, she must be set free. Taslima has
been wronged against. She has the right to be
informed about her visa status, it is of vital
important to her to know if she is a legal
immigrant. After February 17 she is liable to be
an illegal immigrant, if her visa is not
extended. She has a right to meet people of her
choice, her publishers, her lawyer and her
friends, all of which have been denied.

We as Indian citizens have a right to meet her as
much as she has a right to meet us. Many years
ago, the Supreme Court held that a journalist has
a right to meet people in prison to write about
their conditions of detention. We seem to
forgotten those rights.

Taslima has applied for Indian citizenship and
she has a right to know the status of her
application. Her parents were born in undivided
India and that makes her eligible for Indian
citizenship. She has not been given any
information on the status of her application.

Taslima is a refugee from her own country and has
been in exile for the last 12 years and more. It
is true that she has a Swedish passport which
enables her to travel but that does not make her
any less a refugee. She has repeatedly said that
she has no links with Europe and would much
prefer to be in India, a country with which she
and her country share a history, culture and
language. She is no less an exile or a refugee
who is entitled to be treated by India as a
refuge and entitled to refuge in the country of
her choice.

* Indira Jaising is a senior Supreme Court lawyer