Taslima Nasreen, the Bangladeshi writer dogged by controversies, on Wednesday bid goodbye to India, for the time being though, to a European country where she vowed to "expose the cold-blooded state terrorism" that she confronted.
Hounded out of Kolkata, a bitter Taslima sought to put a veil on her travel plans abroad.
Talking to agencies from the Heathrow Airport in London before taking a connecting flight after she left New Delhi on Wednesday morning on a British Airways flight, the 46-year-old author refused to disclose where she was heading, saying she did not want to “compromise” on her security.
“If I disclose my destination my security will be compromised. My face has now become recognisable and I could be target of religious fundamentalists,” she said.
Reports quoting her close friends in Kolkata claimed that she has proceeded on a lecture tour and she has plans to use the State of the World Forum as an invitee of Mikhail Gorbachev.
"I would like to post my horrible experience of being locked in a cage like an animal on my website,” the aide quoted Taslima as saying.
Taslima’s residential permit in India expires in August next and she hopes to return to India sometime in May, for a brief while though.
“I definitely want to come back after the panchayat elections (in West Bengal). I have been told that after the panchayat elections when the ruling political party or its combine would have got their Muslim votes and won the elections, then I might be allowed to travel back to Kolkata,” she had told a TV channel.
Taslima also alleged that she was not allowed to go back to her home in Kolkata to “pick up some important documents before leaving this country”.
“I sincerely hope I will be allowed to live in India after two or three months,” she said.
Officials at the West Bengal secretariat refused to be drawn into any conversation on Taslima's departure from India.
“The government (Indian) is no better than religious fundamentalists.”
“I was determined I would not leave this country. When they said it was pointless trying to destroy my mind, they attempted to destroy my body. In this they succeeded in ruining my health which leaves me with no other alternative but to leave this country,” she added.
No response
Taslima said she had sent letters to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Congress president Sonia Gandhi and CPM stalwart Jyoti Basu requesting that she be allowed to live in Kolkata but she never received any answer from them.
India, by caging Amnesty France's nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize 2005, is a secular democracy? If so, name any other secular democracy that would lock up a liberal intellectual "for her own safety." No, India is one step from being a theistic autocracy. Not only has India lost but also Muslims. I'd favor her going for medical treatment to China, or to Sing Sing Prison in New York (where at least she could go outside for exercise). India seems to me to show one face but not its real face.
