January
2, 2008 I am Like the Living
Dead By Taslima Nasreen
Where am I? I am certain no one will believe me if I say I have no
answer to this apparently straightforward question. They may believe
what they wish, but the truth is I just do not know.
I don't even know how I am. Sometimes I even appear to forget my own
existence. I am like the living dead: benumbed; robbed of the
pleasure of existence and experience; unable to move beyond the
claustrophobic confines of my room. Day and night, night and day.
Death becomes an intimate. We embrace. Yes, this is how I have been
surviving.
This did not begin the other day when I was bundled out of Kolkata.
This has been going on for a while. It is like a slow and lingering
death, like sipping delicately from a cupful of slow-acting poison
that is gradually killing all my faculties.
This is a conspiracy to murder my essence, my being, once so
courageous, so brave, so dynamic, so playful. I realise what is
going on around me but am utterly helpless, despite my best efforts,
to wage a battle on my own behalf.
I am merely a disembodied voice. Those who once stood by me have
disappeared into the darkness.
I ask myself: what heinous crime have I committed? Why am I here, in
this singularly unenviable position? What sort of life is this where
I can neither cross my own threshold nor know the joys of human
company?
What crime have I committed that I have to spend my life hidden
away, relegated to the shadows? For what crimes am I being punished
by this society, this land, this world?
I wrote of my beliefs and my convictions. I used words, not
violence, to express my ideas. I did not take recourse to pelting
stones or bloodshed to make my point.
Yet, I am considered a criminal. I am being persecuted because it
was felt that the right of others to express their opinions was more
legitimate than mine.
To disobey the powers that be is to court public crucifixion. Yes, I
am a victim of this new crucifixion: is the nation not a witness to
my suffering? Does the nation not witness my immense suffering, the
death of my hopes, aspirations, and desires?
Does the nation not realise how immense the suffering must be for an
individual to renounce her most deeply held beliefs? How humiliated,
frightened, and insecure I must have been to allow my words to be
censored. Only the expurgation of what they considered offensive
satisfied them.
If I had not agreed to their grotesque bowdlerization, I would have
been hounded and pursued till I dropped dead. Their politics, their
faith, their barbarism, and their diabolical purposes are all intent
on sucking the lifeblood out of me.
They will continue till they have bled me dry, expurgated these
words, and removed these truths that are so difficult for them to
stomach. Words are harmless, truth defenceless and devoid of arms.
Truth has always been vanquished by the force of might.
How can I - a powerless and unprotected individual - battle brute
force? Come what may, though, I cannot take recourse to untruth.
What have I to offer but love and compassion? I have never wished
ill of anybody. Call me romantic, but I dream of a world of
harmonious coexistence free from the shackles of hatred and strife.
In the way that they used hatred to rip out my words, I would like
to use compassion and love to rip the hatred out of them.
Certainly, I am enough of a realist to acknowledge that strife,
hatred, cruelty, and barbarism are integral elements of the human
condition. This will not change; such is the way of the world.
I am an utterly insignificant creature: how can I change all this?
Even if I were to be eradicated or exterminated it would not matter
one whit to the world at large. I know all this.
Yet, I had imagined Bengal would be different. I had thought the
madness of her people was temporary. I had thought that the Bengal I
loved so passionately would never forsake me. She did.
Exiled from Bangladesh, I wandered around the world for many years
like a lost orphan. The moment I was given shelter in West Bengal it
felt as though all those years of numbing tiredness just melted
away. I was able to resume a normal life in a beloved and familiar
land.
So long as I survive, I will carry within me the vistas of Bengal,
her sunshine, her wet earth, her very essence.
The same Bengal whose sanctuary I once walked a million blood-soaked
miles to reach has now turned its back upon me. I find it hard to
believe that I am no longer wanted in Bengal. I am a Bengali within
and without; I live, breathe, and dream in Bengali but, bizarrely,
Bengal offers me no refuge.
I am a guest in this land, I must be careful of what I say. I must
do nothing that violates the code of hospitality. I did not come
here to hurt anyone's sentiments or feelings.
Arguably, I came here to be hurt. Wounded and hurt in my own
country, I suffered slights and injuries in many lands before I
reached India, where I knew I would be hurt yet again.
This is, after all, a democratic and secular land where the politics
of the vote bank implies that being secular is equated with being
pro-Muslim fundamentalists.
I do not wish to believe all this. I do not wish to hear all this.
Yet, all around me I read, hear, and see evidence of this. I
sometimes wish I could be like those mythical monkeys, oblivious of
all that is going on around me.
Death who visits me in many forms now feels like a friend. I feel
like talking to him, unburdening myself to him. You must realise I
have no one to speak to, no one to unburden myself to.
I have lost my beloved Bengal. The Bengal I cherished, whose land,
smells, and sounds, whose very air was a part of me, is gone. I had
to leave Bengal. No child torn from its mother's breast could have
suffered as much as I did during that painful parting.
Once again, I have lost the mother from whose womb I was born. The
pain is no less than the day I lost my biological mother. My mother
had always wanted me to return home. That was something I could not
do. After settling down in Kolkata, I was able to tell my mother,
who by then was a memory within me, that I had indeed returned home.
How did it matter which side of an artificial divide I was on?
I do not have the courage to tell my mother that my life now is that
of a nomad. How can I tell her that those who had given me shelter
saw fit to expel me so unceremoniously? My sensitive mother would be
shattered if I were to tell her all this. I choose not to tell her,
not even when I am lonely and alone.
Instead, I have now taken to convincing myself that I must have
transgressed somewhere, committed some grievous error. Why else
would I be in such an unenviable situation?
Is daring to utter the truth a terrible sin in this era of falsehood
and deceit? Don't others tell the truth? Surely they do not have to
undergo such tribulations? Why do I have to undergo such suffering?
Is it because I am a woman? What can be easier than assailing a
woman?
I know I have not been condemned by the masses. If their opinion had
been sought, I am certain the majority would have wanted me to stay
on in Bengal.
But when has a democracy reflected the voice of the masses? A
democracy is run by those who hold the reins of power who do exactly
what they think fit. An insignificant individual, I must now live
life on my own terms and write about what I believe in and hold
dear.
It is not my desire to harm, malign, or deceive. I do not lie. I try
not to be offensive. I am but a simple writer who neither knows nor
understands the dynamics of politics.
The way in which I was turned into a political pawn, however, and
treated at the hands of base politicians, beggars belief. For what
end you may well ask. A few measly votes. It is I who have suffered.
I am the only victim of this great tragedy. The force of
fundamentalism, which I have opposed and fought for very many years,
has only been strengthened by my tragic defeat.
This is my beloved India, where I have been living and writing on
secular humanism, human rights, and emancipation of women. This is
also the land where I have had to suffer and pay the price for my
most deeply held and fundamental convictions, where not a single
political party of any persuasion has spoken out in my favour, where
no non-governmental organisation, women's rights or human rights
group, has stood by me or condemned the vicious attacks launched
upon me.
This is an India I have never before known. Yes, it is true that
individuals in a scattered, unorganised manner are fighting for my
cause and journalists, writers, and intellectuals have spoken out in
my favour.
I do not know whether they are familiar with my work or not, indeed
if they have even read a single word I have penned. Yet, I am
grateful for their opinions and support.
Wherever individuals gather in groups, they seem to lose their power
to speak out. Frankly, this facet of the new India terrifies me.
Then again, is this a new India, or even a facet of a new India; or
is it the true face of the nation?
I do not know. Since my earliest childhood I have regarded India as
a great land and a fearless nation. The land of my dreams:
enlightened, strong, progressive, and tolerant.
I want to be proud of that India. I will die a happy person the day
I know India has forsaken darkness for light, bigotry for tolerance.
I await that day.
I do not know whether I will survive, but India and what she stands
for have to survive, must be allowed to survive.
(Taslima Nasreen is a well-known Bangladeshi writer living in exile
in India)
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