Nasreen’s book launch cancelled

IANS/Kolkata

People hold up copies of the new book of Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen as they stage a protest in Kolkata yesterday

A book by controversial author Taslima Nasreen was not allowed to be released at the scheduled venue at Kolkata Book Fair yesterday after objections from fundamentalists.“We were told (by the organisers) in the afternoon that we won’t be allowed because some of the fundamentalists have objected to it. Then we asked for permission to release the book in front of our stall. They denied that even. But we have released the book in front of our stall,” said Shivani Mukherjee of Peoples’ Book Society, publisher of Nirbasan (Exile). The book is the seventh volume of her autobiography.The latest instalment of the Bengali autobiography details the circumstances of her forced exile from Kolkata in 2007 following threats from Islamic fundamentalists and the hardships she faced after losing her “adopted home” as she called the metropolis.Contacted for comments, a top official of Publishers’ and Booksellers’ Guild, the organisers of the book fair, initially said the programme was cancelled as the hall was not ready.“The hall was not ready as the Kolkata Literary Fair has just ended yesterday so we had to cancel the scheduled book release programme,” said Guild general secretary Tridib Chattopadhyay.Asked whether the scheduled release was cancelled due to threats from fundamentalists, Chattopadhyay said: “We cannot allow any such thing to happen inside the Book Fair premises which can hurt the interest of the common people coming to the fair.” Nasreen shot to fame with her controversial book Lajja and has been the target of Islamic fundamentalists. She has been in exile from Bangladesh since 1994.During her exile, she has lived in various countries, including France, Sweden and India - in Kolkata. However, she was dramatically bundled out of West Bengal in 2007. Despite her wish to return to the state, the communist government of the time did not pay any heed to her request. Earlier Islamic fundamentalists had issued fatwas against her both in Bangladesh and in India. Late last month, in a volatile mix of religion and politics, the Jaipur Literary Festival, Asia’s largest literary event, found itself dogged by controversy over British Indian novelist Salman Rushdie first having to call off his visit and then his much-anticipated video address following security threats triggered by some Islamic groups’ protest over his book Satanic Verses, banned 24 years back.