JOIN US Organisers of the Kolkata Book Fair had to endure a few uneasy moments on Wednesday as they cancelled the official launch of controversial author Taslima Nasreen's autobiography.
Despite denials that they had buckled-in to threats of disruption by fundamentalist elements, the scheduled launch of the autobiography at the fair on Wednesday was cancelled and the publishers were denied permission to have the launch inside the venue.
"We were told (by organisers) in the afternoon that we won't be allowed because some of the fundamentalists have objected to it,” said Shivani Mukherjee, of Peoples' Book Society, publisher of the memoirs "Nirbasan" (Exile).
“We then asked permission to release the book in front of our stalls and were refused. But we went ahead and released the book in front of our stalls,” she added.
Tridib Chattopadhyay, Secretary of Publisher and Book Sellers Guild, the Fair organisers, blamed non-availability of the hall for the cancellation.
"The hall was not ready as the Kolkata Literary meet has just ended yesterday so we had to cancel the scheduled book release programme," Chattopadhyay said.
"We cannot allow any (disruption by fundamentalist) to happen inside the Book Fair premises which can hurt the interest of the common people coming to the fair,” he said when asked if the cancellation was due to threats from fundamentalists.