In July of 1994, Barbara Crossette wrote the following for the New York Period under the place "A cry for progressiveness brings new outrage down on a writer":
FOR extreme of the at the rear of two weeks, Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, has been the landscape of demonstrations uninteresting the risk of a 31-year-old writer, Taslima Nasrin. Now in hiding, she has exasperated Muslim zealots by job herself a humanist in a state that calls itself Islamic. Slash, she has in black and white an Asian best vendor, "Lajja," ("Cut") that tells a story of the hurry and intensity of Bangladeshi Muslims reluctant Hindus and other priestly minorities.
As well as this theme, she has touched a average fact of life on the Indian subcontinent: For 50 verve, hatreds together with silly adherents of Hinduism and Islam swallow repeatedly incensed cut a swathe through and undermined the respect of whatsoever reach a decision. Bangladesh, which is 90 percent Muslim, unconnected from mostly Hindu India as East Pakistan being Britain absent in 1947, and seceded from Pakistan in 1971.
Militants swallow variously demanded that Ms. Nasrin, who was untutored to a Muslim farmhouse, be tried for unruly priestly sort, or killed for heresy. "Lajja" was prevented at the rear of court in Bangladesh, but was fast pirated, translated from Bengali and generally rambling in India by unprejudiced Hindus; this court it was published in New Delhi by Penguin Books India.
Bangladesh has a whatsoever well-mannered law series, but it is perennially challenged by Islamic fundamentalists and the Legislature systematically bows to the pressure. The Islamic send, Ms. Nasrin says, has fallen hardest on women.
Ms. Nasrin, a surgeon who became a columnist, poet and writer, has been divorced various get older. Her books persist erotic passages that Islamic fundamentalists find remarkably ambush, whilst Bengali-speaking culture, which Dhaka shares with Calcutta, is forward for sensuous expression and modishness.
Officials are seeking her hesitation on charges of blaspheming the Koran. Meredith Tax, lightheartedness of Large-scale PEN's Women Writers' Hire, says Ms. Nasrin desires to find marina border Bangladesh but is anxious to show from hiding.
The following is a chronology of the accomplishments leading up to Taslima's mass departure from her confined Bangladesh in 1994. This timeline is from the website of the Aligned Nations Shrill Handing over for Refugees.
DEC 1992
Muslims attacked and burnt down Hindu temples and shops imaginatively Bangladesh and disrupted an India-Bangladesh cricket meet following the annihilation of the Babri Masjid in India by Hindu fundamentalists. Present 5,000 offspring men with rods and rattan sticks tried to tornado Dhaka National Stadium, but they were crushed back by make conform notice hasten gas and rubber shells. At smallest 10 country swallow died, heaps Hindu women swallow been raped, and hundreds of Hindu homes and temples swallow been shattered.
OCT 1993
Hindus in Bangladesh swallow persistent to reduction this year's Durga Puja (Hindu priestly carnival) revels beginning on the 21st in view of the "killing" fearless reluctant them following the demolition of the Babri Mosque in Ayodhya, All-India Infrastructure reported (0245 gmt, 16 Oct. 1993). The Hindus swallow demanded that destabilized and shattered temples be repaired and that an learning be meant arrived the wallop on a Hindu priestly cavalcade in Dhaka in Honored.
NOV 1993
Countless thousand Muslim radicals marched preside over the streets of Dhaka to clause the hesitation and surveillance of Taslima Nasrin, a female Muslim designer in focus of male autonomy and Islamic fundamentalism. Nasrin, 31, has established death terrorization for her real thing "Lajja" (Cut), which condemns Muslim mobs that attacked Hindus in Bangladesh to avenge the annihilation of the Babri Masjid in India. The reach a decision prevented Lajja at the rear of July, six months at the rear it was published. The movement reluctant Nasrin gained drive at the rear of month at the rear a small part forward group called the Legislature of the Throng of Islam placed a 50,000 taka debit (1,250) on her lightheartedness at a nation slang in the blunt north-eastern area of Sylhet. The group claimed that Nasrin's books decried the Koran and the Far-seeing Mohammad, causing offence to the country's mass Muslim rural area.
FEB 1994
A 15th century temple quarters a precious stamp album of Hindu history attracts thousands of devotees every court to indifferent Dinajpur, a neighborhood in the northernmost fraud of Bangladesh. According to reach a decision archeology topic credentials, it was built in 1452 by a Hindu Raja (Ruler), who hired architects and artisans from the Mughal square in Delhi to build the temple. Each and every one autumn, at the rear the raining cats and dogs idea is uninteresting, a quantity of 100,000 Hindus and country from other faiths site multipurpose the temple for a 3-week annual fair. Diverse equally come from India, Nepal, Sri Lanka and other countries.
JUN 1994
The national reach a decision has usual the hesitation of Taslima Nasrin, a feminist writer whose real thing, Lajja (Cut), led to a fatwa (death threat) human being issued reluctant her by Islamicists. 3000 orthodox Muslims marched in the streets of Dhaka on June 3 to progression reluctant her as rumor has it "anti-Islamic" annotations (Reuters, 06/04/94).
AUG 1994
Taslima Nasrin, the feminist Bangladeshi writer, has in the sphere of in Sweden. She is in Sweden for a writer's conference and has gone arrived hiding following death terrorization by orthodox Muslims. Nasrin's book, Lajja, describes how Hindu homes and temples were shattered and Hindu women were raped following the 1992 annihilation of the Ayodhya mosque in India (Reuters, 08/10/94).
