BJP demands Mamata's resignation after Taslima Nasrin alleges banning of play based on her novel in West Bengal

In a post on Facebook, Nasrin quoted West Bengal police telling the organisers that the people of a particular community of the state might resort to violence if the play was allowed to be staged.

Kolkata: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Monday demanded the resignation of West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee after Taslima Nasrin, an author from Bangladesh now living in exile in India, alleged that the Trinamool Congress (TMC) government in the state forced the organisers of a theatre festival not to stage a play based on her controversial novel Lajja.

Nasrin alleged in her post that West Bengal Police had informed the organisers of the theatre festivals at Gobordanga in the North 24 Parganas district and at Pandua in the Hooghly district of the state that a play based on her novel Lajja would not be allowed to be staged. In a post on Facebook, she quoted West Bengal police telling the organisers that the people of a particular community of the state might resort to violence if the play was allowed to be staged.

"Why do they ban literary works and creative arts, instead of acting against the people who want to resort to rioting?" she wondered.

Nasrin’s novel Lajja (shame) was published in Bangladesh in 1993. It was almost immediately banned as fundamentalists condemned it for hurting the sentiment of the majority community in Bangladesh. In the wake of the death threat by radical clerics, the physician-turned-writer left Bangladesh in 1994 and spent several years in Europe, before relocating to India in 2004. She has been living in Kolkata and Delhi since then.

She said that a theatre group named 'Nabapalli Natya Sanstha' staged the play in New Delhi thrice in packed auditoriums.

The BJP cited Nasrin’s allegation to sharpen its attack on the ruling Trinamool Congress. The saffron party’s senior leader Amit Malviya called the move by the West Bengal police "unprecedented" and denounced the TMC government's move to "stifle" freedom of expression.

Malviya took to X to demand the resignation of TMC supremo Mamata Banerjee from the office of the chief minister. He wrote that if she was unable to manage law and order in West Bengal, she should consider stepping down.