NONAGENARIAN CPI (M) leader and the seniormost politburo member in the party, Jyoti Basu who had maintained a discreet silence on the Taslima issue has at last chosen to speak. He told the media late yesterday that Taslima is welcome to come back to Kolkata but the decision has to be taken by the centre. With Taslima, however, is laced the question of security, Basu said.

 

He said he had read her controversial novel Dwikhondito and the author’s comments on Islam cannot be expected to be taken lightly by the Muslim community. It had led to hurting the sentiments of the community and there has been violence in Kolkata and disturbances elsewhere over it.

 

Basu’s comments come after much drama followed Taslima’s eviction from Kolkata. In the wake of riots engineered by the All India Minority Council leader Idris Ali along with other fundamentalist forces, the Bangladeshi author was hustled out of the city at the behest of the CPI (M) led Left Front government. The Kolkata Police eased her out of the city to Jaipur on November 23.

 

The BJP ruled Rajasthan government quickly seized the issue and tried to turn the tables on the Marxists by alleging that they had not been informed about Taslima arriving in Jaipur. The Rajasthan government was also under pressure from several Muslim organisations in Rajasthan who wanted her to leave the state or face widespread agitation.

 

The centre had to bail out Taslima and she was whisked away by the police from Jaipur to an unknown location in Delhi where she remains. Taslima has complained to the media that’s she is under house arrest and is unable to go anywhere or meet people. To which the External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee had said that she is not under house arrest. But he had asked her to introspect why she had to leave Kolkata. Earlier in a statement in the Lok Sabha, Mukherjee had said that she is welcome to stay in India but she should be mindful of what she wrote and said and should not hurt the sentiments of a section of the people of the country. Following which Taslima had asked her publishers to drop two pages of her controversial book before the next edition.

 

There is mounting pressure on the Left Front government to allow her to return to Kolkata by a significant section of intellectuals, writers, artistes and film and theatre personalities. This could account for Basu saying what he did.