SUKUMARAN C.V.
It was
more than 25 years ago, in 1994, I bought my own copy of Taslima Nazrin’s LAJJA
and virtually devoured it. No other contemporary work of literature has shaken
me as LAJJA has. The following lines she wrote in the preface of LAJJA reveal how true a secularist Taslima Nazrin is: “I detest fundamentalism and communalism. This was
the reason I wrote Lajja soon after the demolition of the Babri Masjid in
Ayodhya on 6 December 1992. Lajja was published in February 1993 in Bangladesh
and sold 60,000 copies before it was banned by the government five months later—their
excuse was that it was disturbing the communal peace. In September that year a
fatwa was issued against me and there have been marches on the streets of Dhaka
by communalists clamouring for my life.”
And now,
Taslima Nazrin wrote SHAMELESS, a sequel to LAJJA, in 2017 and
its English translation was published in this April.
Taslima
Nazrin is the wonderful writer I love and respect as I love and respect no
other contemporary writer. She was forced to be in exile for writing LAJJA,
for her uncompromising stand against religious fundamentalism.
LAJJA tells the story of how Suranjan,
a staunch secularist, had to leave Bangladesh as his sister was raped and
killed in the communal riots errupted in Bangladesh as an aftermath of the
Babari Masjid demolition.
Suranjan
left Bangladesh for India because, as Taslima Nazrin writes in the last chapter
of LAJJA: “There was absolutely no one to depend upon. He was an alien
in his own country.”
And it is
really painful to read in the “Author's Note” at the very beginning of SHAMELESS:
“I had lived in Europe for over a decade after I had to leave Bangladesh, and
was now settled in Kolkata. The state government was putting pressure on me to
leave West Bengal. Where would I go leaving my home in Kolkata behind? Which
country could I call my own?”
These
same questions haunted Suranjan and in SHAMELESS, Tazlima Nazrin meets
Suranjan who tells her:
‘I am
Suranjan. Don’t you recognize me? You wrote a novel about me.’
‘A novel?’
‘Yes, a
novel. You called it Lajja. Don’t you remember?’
Taslima
Nazrin uses novel techniques in fiction. LAJJA was written uniquely. It can
be read as a novel, as news reports and as history. However we read it, it is
engrossing. And in SHAMELESS, we have the wonderful experience of the
character meeting the writer and the writer too becomes character.
The
author-character Taslima tells Suranjan in the first chapter of SHAMELESS:
‘The
religious fanatics were furious with me because I criticised Islam. All
religions are a roadblock to women’s freedom.’
Taslima
Nasrin categorically revealed this truth in LAJJA, two decades ago. She
had to leave her country for writing the novel.
And two
decades after, Taslima Nazrin is still unflinching in her stand against
patriarchy and religious fundamentalism, the two sides of the same coin. Apart
from ripping apart fundamentalism, in this novel she treats communism too as it
deserves.
The
author-character Taslima asks Suranjan in the fifth chapter of SHAMELESS:
‘You used
to believe in communism once. You haven't joined the CPI(M) here?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘There's
no communism anywhere in the world. They are more capitalist than capitalists
themselves.’
‘Everything
evolves.’
Suranjan
smiled. ‘That's just an excuse, claiming to be marching with the times when all
you're doing is protecting the interests of the rich.’
