Taslima Nasrin's novel Lajja (Shame), published by Penguin Books, India, reviewed by K. GOVINDAN "I detest fundamentalism and communalism," begins Taslima Nasrin in the preface to this book.
The feeling is mutual, and so this book is banned in Bangladesh, and a courageous woman has been forced into exile in Sweden, away from the mobs demanding her death.
Lajja, or Shame, brought Nasrin to notoriety because of the rage she expresses at the Courageous: Taslima Nasrin persecution of the Hindu minority in Bangladesh, following the destruction of a Muslim mosque in Ayodhya, India by Hindu communalists in December 1992.
In revenge for anti-Muslim riots in India, Hindus in Pakistan and Bangladesh were attacked and killed, temples, homes and shops were burned, and gang rapes committed.
The book reads at times like a straight report on acts of violence that took place in Bangladesh, and it is a historical record of those anguished days.
However, through the experiences of a fictional Hindu family, the Duttas, it is also a meditation on the post-colonial history of Bangladesh.
Hindus participated in the anti-colonial struggle, and fought alongside Muslims to liberate East Bengal from the Yet the belief that secularism and a multi-ethnic, multireligious nationalism would prevail and guarantee protection for the mosaic of minorities across South Asia, has evaporated.
Transformed
To underline this point, Nasrin shows the transformation of one of the main characters, Suranjan Dutta, who from being an atheist and a member of the Communist Party of Bangladesh, begins to identify himself as a Hindu.
No one is spared from the poison of communalism - not the ruling party, nor leftist groups; and not even Suranjan Dutta, who once deing Bangladesh for India, counted more Muslims than Hindus as friends, and did mass work for his party among Muslims.
As painful as this book is to read, it must have been doubly so to write. Lajia is a book that speaks to the condition of minorities everywhere, and is an admission of the 'collective defeat' of those who would defend their rights.
Nasrin, though, is far from pessimistic. She pledges herself to uniting secularists and humanists in the fight against religious extremism and bigotry, and dedicates her book to 'the people of the Indian subcontinent'.
She has many friends and allies in that good fight.
SOCIALIST OUTLOOK No.72, November 19 1994, Page 13 Helena BonhamCarter stars with Branagh in this glitzy remake