India promises to protect Muslim author in exile

28/11/2007 07:53

By Y.P. Rajesh

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India said on Wednesday it would continue to host and protect a controversial Bangladeshi Muslim woman writer who has fled from city to city since her radical Islamist critics stoked violence last week.

The fate of Taslima Nasreen, who had been in the eastern Indian city of Kolkata since 2003, has become a hot political issue for New Delhi with the Hindu nationalist opposition accusing the government of pandering to Muslim minorities by trying to get her out of the country.

But Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee said that historically, India had never refused shelter to those who had sought the country’s protection.

"This civilisational heritage, which is now government policy, will continue, and India will provide shelter to Ms. Nasreen," he told parliament.

"While guests are in India, the union and state governments provide them protection," he said. "This will also apply in Ms. Taslima Nasreen’s case."

Authorities rushed award-winning Nasreen, who criticises the use of religion as an oppressive force, from her home in Kolkata last week after protests against her by Muslim groups led to riots, forcing the army to be called in.

The riots appeared to be the culmination of years of simmering anger at Nasreen. Some radical Muslims hate Nasreen for saying Islam and .....continued below

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other religions oppress women, and Indian clerics had issued a "death warrant" against her in August.

After the riots, police moved her to a hotel in the western state of Rajasthan and then she was quickly sent to Delhi at the weekend under police protection.

BUNDLED AWAY

She spent a few days at a state guest house before being bundled away to a secret security facility as New Delhi feared protests by Muslim groups in the capital.

Nasreen has told Indian TV channels that she wants to return to Kolkata, but with the communist government there seen as not keen to further anger Muslims, that possibility seems remote.

Her visa is due to expire in February and New Delhi will have to decide whether to extend it. Wednesday’s assurance that it would continue sheltering Nasreen came with a warning.

"Those who have been granted shelter here have always undertaken to eschew political activities in India or any actions which may harm India’s relations with friendly countries," Mukherjee said.

"It is also expected that the guests will refrain from activities and expressions that may hurt the sentiments of our people," he said, an apparent reference to the outspoken Nasreen.

Nasreen fled Bangladesh for the first time in 1994 when a court said she had "deliberately and maliciously" hurt Muslims’ religious feelings with her Bengali-language novel "Lajja", or "Shame", which is about riots between Muslims and Hindus.

Several of her books have been banned in India and Bangladesh. The European Parliament awarded her the Sakharov Prize for freedom of thought in 1994.

(Editing by Roger Crabb)

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