Sep 21, 2005 10:11 AM
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(Updated Sep 21, 2005 10:11 AM)
Ah now this one, it has created so much controversy and got the writer nearly killed and had the clerics up in arms against one an all. Wow now that’s some heady combination for a young writer attempting to write something out of her own honest observations and share the truth (well maybe slightly concocted) with her readers. One wonders why more often then not any piece of literature that attempts to touch the sensitive issue of religion evokes such outrage. Is it because all of us including the so called educated people are getting more and more intolerant about our religious leanings or is there a deeper mental malaise that we all seem to suffer from? This book comes across as a powerful one as it attempts to charter into that so called forbidden territory which the so called votaries of religion consider their own personal fiefdom and it tries to weave this central theme in the form of fiction. Wow I love this, one after the other fiction works, which borrows from the times and ambience they are set in, making each of them quasi- fiction if I may dare to use that word.
The book in question is Lajja, literal meaning shame by the Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen. It talks about the indignities heaped on a Hindu family of four, right from the time of Bangladesh’s liberation. The book brilliantly essays the lives of the minority community in the repressed and restricted environment of the Bangladeshi life. It talks about a Bengali Hindu family who kept hanging on their Sonar Bangla pride despite of things turning worse with each passing day as communal tension gripped the entire country. The book is set during the post Babri Masjid demolition times and how this one act of bravado by the BJP led kar sewaks made life miserable for so many of their Hindu brethrens living across the border in a predominantly Muslim country. Well that is gist, theme and story of the book, I am not going to talk any further about the story rather let’s talk about the ideas and settings of the novel per se.
Taslima depicts brilliantly the agony and pain of being a woman when hatred spreads or the virus of communalism rears its ugly visage. It’s the women who suffer the most and who more often then not are victims to gruesome acts of cruelty in the name of religion and God. She is assaulted not only physically but also emotionally and her very motherhood becomes a target for the mob. They would molest her and in the name of being the self-proclaimed votaries of religion they would force themselves upon her so that the next generation is born to their religion. The story of the Hindu girl in this novel talks about this same hatred, lajja or shame. One can draw a parallel between the girl of Taslima’s novel to that of the main protagonist, again a girl in Sadat Hasan Manto’s “Kali Sarwar”, the latter being set during partition times when communal frenzy was at its peak.
The gruesome depiction of communal hatred in both Manto and Taslima’s book through the medium of the exploitation of the women is indeed telling and painful. Every time the girl is molested she is per force converted to the religion that the perpetrators of the crime belong to, who feel they have fulfilled their moral responsibility by doing so. In the end the poor girl is just reduced to a bundle of flesh. The story is numbing and makes one abhorrent of what had happened then and now in the name of the pious religions we all swear allegiance to.
The question, which comes up then, is why are the so-called votaries of religion so disturbed by the bitter truth brought forth by a litterateur? Lajja could have been answered by another book countering it if they found the truths being espoused by the book so disturbing, but the fanatics who have no love for the written other then their religious tomes, declared Nasreen as a Kafir. Recent history is witness that when religious fanatics feel their authority challenged their impotence finds expression in a fatwa. Manto's Thanda Gosht, Gorky's Mother and Acharya Chatursen's islam ki vish vriksha received the same fate as Nasreen's writings. Can't voice be answered by a voice, and not a steam? Are we moving towards medieval times by issuing a death sentence, a fatwa? These are powerful questions on which each one of us should ponder and decide where are we heading in the name of religious intolerance, why is it that we need a Babri Masjid to happen or a Godhra or a Bombay riot every time in the name of religion.
The book is a powerful vehicle of the blatant truth and Taslima needs to be commended for the sheer grit and courage that she has shown against tremendous personal and emotional costs. The state has remained silent to all the atrocities and she has been forced to flee Bangladesh lest some fanatic killed her. One is reminded at once of the famous lines from Tagore, Jodi tor dak shune keu na ashe, tobe ekla cholo re (If no one comes to your support, plough a lonely furrow. With those words I end my review and I would recommend this book to one and all.
Questions
In the name of religion are we becoming butchers and barbarians in a different sense of the term, why do we need a Godhra or a Bombay riot or a Bhagalpur to realize how intolerant we have become?
Why is it that more often then not Islam, literal meaning peace is associated with such acts of intolerance? I have personally read the Quran, hadits and number of other Islamic scriptures, all they talk about is peace and brotherhood then where is this fanaticism getting force?
What could be the one solution for the ills of communalism and why do people who dare to speak against religion have to flee and take exile in other places?
P.S. Watch out for my next review on one of the best partition era writer Sadat Hasan Manto’s Toba Tek Singh
