Kolkata, Aug 1:
Exiled Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasreen on Friday returned to Kolkata after nearly 19 years, describing the visit as an emotional homecoming to a city she still considers her own.
Her arrival comes ahead of a literary event on Saturday that has acquired political resonance under West Bengal’s new BJP government.
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With folded hands, Nasreen greeted those waiting to receive her at the Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose International Airport and said, “I am feeling very good to be back.” Her return marks her first visit to Kolkata since November 2007, when she was compelled to leave the city following violent protests over her writings, ending what she had often described as the closest thing to home after her exile from Bangladesh.
The author will make her first public appearance here at an anti-fundamentalism literary programme at Rabindra Sadan, where she is expected to recite poetry.
Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari and renowned author Shirshendu Mukhopadhyay are among those expected to attend.
Though conceived as a literary gathering, the event has inevitably assumed political significance, coming months after the BJP formed the government in West Bengal and amid renewed debate over freedom of expression, secularism and the state’s approach towards religious sensitivities.
Ahead of her visit, Nasreen had told PTI that returning to Kolkata felt like coming back to “my own country”.
“I feel as though I am returning to my own country. Bengal has never been divided in my heart by a border or a barbed-wire fence. The door to the eastern part of Bengal remains closed to me, so for now, this part of Bengal is my home,” she had said.
She said she was returning “with joy, but also with pain”, recalling that Kolkata had given her a home, friends, readers and a sense of belonging before she was forced to leave.
Calling the visit more than a personal homecoming, Nasreen said it symbolised the return of a voice that religious fundamentalists had once tried to silence.
She also thanked the organisers and the present West Bengal government for facilitating her visit and providing security, while asserting that a writer’s freedom should remain a fundamental right irrespective of the ideology of the government in power.