The news spread like wildfire. It spread to a section of the civil society in Kolkata, carefully nurtured, some alleged, by Sunil himself. Not because I had written anything against him in this book but in apprehension of what I might in the next. If I could be banned and prohibited, I could subsequently be discredited as an unworthy, irresponsible, unbalanced writer. I could easily be branded as a liar. No one would listen to me; no one would want to read what I write. Before the storm could die down, news arrived that the CPI(M)-led Left Front Government of West Bengal had decided to ban Dwikhandito. Apparently, twenty-five renowned literary figures had petitioned the chief minister, Buddhadeb Bhattacharya, against my book, and the latter had read the book himself before deciding on bringing the axe down on it. The reason cited, however, was that I had hurt the religious sentiments of a certain section of people. The book had already been banned in Bangladesh. Syed Shamsul Haque had moved the court with his defamation lawsuit and had passionately pleaded against the book, resulting in the high court banning it before the government ever could. Perhaps emboldened by these events, an almost unknown poet from West Bengal filed another lawsuit against me—this one worth eleven crore rupees. Authors prohibiting authors, filing lawsuits against authors—these things are perhaps unheard of anywhere else in the world. One would assume writers would stand behind writers and speak out against the injustice of banning a literary work. The more I see the scholars of West Bengal and Bangladesh, the more it amazes me to realize how selfish and opportunistic most of them are, how dependent on being in the government’s good graces. All assertions of ethics or morality remain strictly confined to the printed page or the podium—no trace of it stains their beliefs, behaviours or lives.
So, eminent literary figures from West Bengal and Bangladesh dedicated themselves to my downfall. One only had to listen to them, or read what they had to say about me to understand how horrific and cruel slander can be. Humayun Azad4 wrote, ‘I did not even deem the book fit to be read. Even I have been abused in various ways in it; she has produced a litany of lies. However, she could at least not accuse me of anything sexual because I have never taken up on her advances. After having read about the recently published Ko in various journals and newspapers, it has seemed to me as nothing but a prostitute’s naked confessions, a sordid account of her wretched existence.’
Humayun Azad used to write critiques of religion. He started on a book on women’s rights after coming to know that I was writing one. Strangely enough, I do not recall sensing in him any respect for women. In fact, there was a time when he used to compose misogynistic tracts. He may have taken to writing the book Naari (Woman) after witnessing the popularity of my Nirbachito Kolam (Selected Columns), perhaps realizing how writing about women would garner him more popularity, but the innate tendency to regard women only as sexual objects is a difficult mindset to change. Thus, he could lie glibly; being a tenured university professor, he could claim to have never taken me up on my ‘advances’. As if I had ever made any in the first place! He could so easily describe the autobiography of a strong woman—a doctor, a celebrated author, winner of numerous literary and human rights accolades—as ‘a prostitute’s naked confessions, a sordid account of her wretched existence’. Even the worst misogynist would not be able to accuse a woman of something like this without knowing a single thing about her. I feel perturbed thinking about the sort of future we are nurturing if a jealous, lying cad like Humayun Azad is a university professor. In a patriarchal society, there is no dearth of equally misogynistic fools to feed and foment people like him.
Nima Haque5 commented, ‘There are limits to independence. Taslima has overstepped these limits. Not only does she deserve rebuke for this travesty in the name of literature, she deserves punishment too.’ I used to know Asad Chowdhury6 fairly well; in fact, he used to be very appreciative of my writing. He commented, ‘Literature is an amalgamation of the personal, the social and the communal. Shameless descriptions of debauchery can never be passed off as literature.’7
In West Bengal too, the vultures had begun to gather. Samaresh Majumdar8 wrote, ‘Nearly ninety years ago there lived a famous prostitute in Sonagachi9 called Nandarani. Nearly all of Kolkata’s high and mighty had been her regular clients. If she had wanted to write a novel about them, she could have done so a long time ago. However, in her personal life, she had known how to live in society with quiet dignity and civility. Taslima Nasrin, unfortunately, has been unable to partake of Nandarani’s sense of self-respect. She has changed her men like women change clothes, valorized sex over a more mental connection. Other women have thus far been unaware of her duplicity. Everyone is entitled to freedom of speech; she has fairly utilized it and we have had to hear her. It is, however, our responsibility to judge its merits the best way we can. It is fine to swear like a sailor in front of one’s friends, the same is termed obscenity when done in public. Whatever she is confessing publicly now, she had been equally complicit in letting them come to pass. In fact, her only goal had been to sell her books and garner cheap publicity.’ The poet Subodh Sarkar10 wrote, ‘She has sent a sexual bomb called Ko from Sweden which has exploded in Dhaka. The book is apparently about society, family and religion but what has grabbed the most eyeballs in this are the titillating passages on sex and the fact that sex can even trump issues like Iraq and America in this wretched world. Alas! Is she so sexually depraved that she cannot leave even her father or those like him alone! They are saying there will be more such lists of your sexual conquests; people in Kolkata have begun to grow anxious already. I am sure you have Italians and French on your list too. In fact, quiet soon you might even be counted one of the foremost prostitutes of the world. A handful of Bengali scholars would even write about you, about how a writer was forced by socio-economic circumstances into such a lifestyle. People from the seamier districts will soon inquire about which currency you get paid in. Is it in US dollars? Swedish krona? Rupee or taka? You had wished to give a voice to women who have never had a voice of their own. So what went wrong with that righteous image? Now those very women will disinfect their hands if they even accidentally happen to touch you. Even all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten your little hands ever again.’
Shirshendu Mukhopadhyay,11 when asked about me, commented: ‘From what I have heard she has described her sexual relationships with a number of intellectuals. While I find nothing wrong with that per se, especially if she has been true to her own self, what I do find appalling is that she has done so simply to create a stir. This I cannot condone. A part of an author’s responsibility is to recognize the fine line between literature and obscenity.’
Even Nabanita Dev Sen12 did not have anything nice to say about the book. Bani Basu13 remarked, ‘If an autobiography reads like a publicity gimmick then one has to question its authenticity. This curiosity is temporary since the writing itself hardly has any merit. It simply has no literary value.’ Strangely enough, Bani Basu later read my column in Dainik Statesman (the Bengali edition of the Statesman) and called me up to tell me how much she likes my writing. I am not entirely sure, however, if she has confessed to this appreciation to anyone else.
Mallika Sengupta14, an up-and-coming feminist poet, commented: ‘This is simply sex for the sake of sex. It is a laundry-list, not an autobiography. I am especially unsure about its credibility, much as I have been unsure of her before. I am not sure I believe her as an author and a feminist. Most of the relationships have been made up by her, and the list of people she has slept with is obviously meant to create a stir. This is hardly a unique ploy and it also explains why she has lost public support. Not many wish to write salacious tales of the bedroom like her, and thankfully, these are the people who keep literature safe. This is also why feminism is alive and fighting out there, where it makes a difference, rather than simply languishing in Taslima’s bedroom.’
I had always considered poet Gautam Ghosh Dastidar15 a friend. Responding to Dwikhandito, he wrote: ‘These contradictions, t
his conscious use of unreason, half-truths, bitterness and brazenness—these are the trademarks of Taslima’s character. I doubt she understands the meaning of ethics, fame being her singular obsession. This leads her to treat notoriety as fame, compelling her to shamelessly bare herself and her partner under the guise of writing an autobiography. It highlights a complete dissociation from any ethical responsibilities on her part. Even if we were to believe these accounts as truth, one still wonders whether she has the right to reveal such personal encounters—whether she can so glibly disregard certain promises made in relationships, irrespective of how fragile they are. However, it is foolish to expect her to adhere to ethical concerns which have not developed in her in the first place.’
The Naxalite writer Azizul Haque16 wrote, ‘A physically and morally bankrupt author has finally renounced her shame and come down to the streets. She still wears clothes, perhaps out of sheer force of habit. Is this freedom of speech? What next? A rabid dog barks to protest against human fascism and that is its fundamental right? By this logic, if someone claims complete freedom of speech, another can claim the freedom to use force. So why can’t a crime of passion be a fundamental right? What can anyone say when a woman is hell-bent upon turning her own body into a public urinal? If someone puts a urinal to its proper use, what is the point of raising a hue and cry? My advice is: Don’t ban them, simply cast them aside. If you see garbage on the road, you either step around it or you get it cleaned up. Let the protest gather at the printing press, where it rightly should. Where are the sentinels of culture, the workers who will picket the publishers, the typesetters, and the binders, and give rise to a movement calling for a complete rejection of this rubbish that is masquerading as a book?’
Ashok Dasgupta, the editor of the Bengali daily Aajkal, wrote, ‘There are two reasons why one must summarily reject Taslima’s Dwikhandito. It is tasteless, obscene and is nothing but an attempt to malign someone’s character. There have been cases filed in Kolkata and Dhaka already. Though these are not the reasons behind the ban, let us take a closer look at the first set of accusations vis-à-vis taste and obscenity. Firstly, Sunil Gangopadhyay had commented that when two consenting individuals form a relationship, it is a sort of a contract which should not be broken by either party at their own convenience. Secondly, the dusty yellow-jacketed booklets sold by the wayside are perhaps replete with a thousand equally lurid sexual encounters. Nevertheless, they do not drag living or actual people into the quagmire. Thirdly, why do we even have to believe that what an author writes about someone they know is the unembellished truth? Fourthly, perhaps Taslima herself has no family, and no social responsibilities, but the people she has maligned have certain social roles, families, and children. Even if one can tolerate the other 393 pages of filth, why should we have to condone the two pages of incendiary vulgarity? Even people like Shankha Ghosh17 and Sunil Gangopadhyay, never in favour of banning a book, have considered this to be an exceptional situation.’
While such cruel assumptions and accusations were being levelled against me by intellectuals and writers from West Bengal and Bangladesh, I received a request from the Bengali magazine Desh to write a rejoinder. Written one midnight in New York, the article began with these famous lines by Rosa Luxemburg: ‘Freedom is always and exclusively freedom for the one who thinks differently.’
After all these years, when I look back at the hazy grey road I have walked down, when sudden flashes of memories, tiny fragments of forgotten dreams, shake me to my core, I cannot help but stumble helplessly and sift through cold, forgotten things lost in time. What use are these reminiscences? Those dreams were cast aside a long time back, so much so that they are barely recognizable now. To dredge them back up again, to clear the clutter and the cobwebs off places long abandoned, is an entirely futile exercise. Yet, my exile has forced me to turn to my past again and again, made me spend long, terrible nights in a sort of dazed stupor, immersed in the darkest despair. And on such nights, I have written about that girl.
I have written about the timid, bashful and self-effacing girl who, brought up within the strictest confines of a traditional family and its everyday rules and petty injustices, got used to her dreams and desires being tossed aside without a word, while struggling to keep the preying hands of male relatives at bay. I have written about that rather plain little girl who grew up with long-nurtured dreams of a love that she finally found in her youth, who secretly got married and wanted to spend her life just like any other woman. I have written about the girl who, betrayed by her husband, the love of her life, had been compelled—by grief, regret, pain, despair—to contemplate suicide as her fragile world came crashing down around her. I have written about the girl who painfully gathered her shattered dreams in an effort to go on living, who wanted a place of her own in this cruel, unforgiving society, and who was forced to submit repeatedly to the guardianship of men in accordance with social mores. Yet she was hit by an onslaught of such cruelty, spite and viciousness that it destroyed her unborn child and made her bleed every night. I have written the tale of how she gathered what little strength she had left to stand up on her feet again, not once leaning on someone else this time, fighting and living alone and only for her own self. I have recollected how she became her own refuge, how she learnt to snub social censure and archaic customs, and how every mistake she made, every stumble, every fall, only made her stronger. She gradually learnt to consider life, with all its wretchedness, as her own, and not be beholden to someone else—this is the tale I have written, of evolution, of her creation, as she was burnt to steel by the fires of patriarchy.
Did I do anything wrong? I don’t believe I did but many people around me felt that I committed a grave offence, a heinous crime, by writing such a tale. And so, I was put to a public trial. It would have perhaps not been such a big deal if I had not revealed that the girl was me, Taslima, and not an imaginary woman whose tale I had concocted. In fiction, I am allowed to fabricate a life story, celebrate a woman’s difference, and her journey of self-discovery. However, the moment there is a whiff of truth in the tale, the moment I have asserted that this is me, this is my tale of overcoming what life has put in front of me, of becoming my own person, of living life on my own terms, it is not surprising that I have offended so many people. Indeed, how can a woman speak like this! I am truly a sore misfit in this patriarchal environment.
I am a forbidden name in my country now, as well as in my beloved West Bengal, a prohibited person, a banned book. My name cannot be uttered lest the tongue catch fire, I must not be touched as I might pollute, and I should definitely not be read lest it spark rage and unrest. This is me; thus I have always been.
Even if Dwikhandito leaves me shattered into a thousand fragments, I will never admit that I have done anything wrong. It is not wrong to write one’s autobiography, to want to share one’s deepest and darkest secrets. The first condition of writing an autobiography is the complete transparency regarding the facts of life, and not sly compromises to avoid uncomfortable truths and proverbial skeletons. With my last ounce of integrity, I have tried to adhere to this principle and not hidden anything. While the first two volumes, Aamar Meyebela (My Girlhood) and Utol Hawa (Restless Wind), did not cause any dispute, the third created a furore in Bengal. I did not engineer this controversy, others did. People have accused me of deliberately choosing controversial material, which is simply not true—especially in the case of a memoir. I have only been candid regarding the significant events and people that have contributed to my life and my growth. I have spoken frankly about my world view and my blind spots, my dreams and my despair, my joy, my tears, my love, my hatred, the beauty and the ugliness that surrounds it all. I have not chosen a sensitive or controversial issue to write about, I have chosen my life. If that life has been sensitive and controversial, then how do I possibly make it staid and uncomplicated while writing? I have been accused of having written the book as a gimmick, primarily to cause trouble—as if the sole reason fo
r wanting to write must be something nefarious, as if honesty and truth cannot be sufficient incentives, as if courage, the same quality that people apparently used to appreciate in me once upon a time, cannot be a reason either. I am used to debates over my writing; that is how it has been for me since the very beginning. Is my disinterest in making compromises with patriarchy not sufficient reason for controversy?
Different people have different ways of defining an autobiography. Most love to read about lives which are replete with lovely words and thoughts, culminating in a plethora of stunning didactic aphorisms. Hence, great individuals have usually written their life stories to have these serve as beacons for someone else, to show them the path to the truth. Sadly, I am not such a person; neither am I wise, nor a saint—when I write I don’t do so out of a selfless desire to illumine someone’s way. I write to lay bare the wounds and grievances of an otherwise insignificant person.
Despite not being a great author or a renowned personality, I cannot deny that a series of remarkable incidents have come to pass in my life. If millions of people take to the streets demanding my head because of my beliefs and convictions, if my books are banned because I disagree with the status quo, if the State feels threatened enough by what I say to take my home and my country away from me, how can I say that I have lived an ordinary life? Since this story, and various coloured and ornate versions of it, is already being told and shared, why should I not take up the job myself? In fact, who would know more about my life than me? If I cannot lay myself bare, if I cannot reveal my darkest secrets, the incidents which have left their indelible trace on me, if I cannot confess to what is good in me or what is bad, to my faults, my mistakes, my joys and my sorrows, if I cannot own up to my acts of kindness or those of cruelty, no matter what I write, it will definitely never become an autobiography. I cannot write just for the sake of good literature. I value honesty too much to do so.
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