Intellectuals, activists demand asylum for Taslima in India

New Delhi, Feb 2 (UNI) Even as the Government extended the visa of exiled Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen by six months, intellectuals and activists have demanded that she be granted asylum in India.

Writers Khuswant Singh and Arundhati Roy, retired Justice (Retd) Leila Seth, veteran journalists Kuldeep Nayyar and Saeed Naqvi, playwright Vijay Tendulkar, social activist Aruna Roy and film makers Shyam Benegal and Girish Naqvi, in a letter published in the 'Outlook' magazine this week, have rallied in support of Taslima's right to speak freely on the 'burqa'.

''It would be a shame if we who pride ourselves on our democratic traditions should refuse her asylumon this count,'' the signatories said in the letter.

Taslima's detractors have been demanding that she be ''thrown out'' of the country for her views on the burqa published in the magazine.

''We uphold Taslima Nasreen's right to speak forthrightly on any subject, including the burqa.... It is her fundamental right. Instead of taking her on intellectually, her detractors are using reprehensible ways of suppressing her opinion,'' the letter said.

''They are gathering outside her apartment in Calcutta and demanding that the government throw her out of the country,'' it added.

Taslima, whose visa was to expire on February 17, can now stay till August 17, 2007 in India. With this extension, she would hold an Indian visa for two years.

The writer, who was exiled from Bangladesh following a fatwa against her for her book 'Lajja' in 1993, had initially taken an Indian visa for one year as a Swedish National of Bangladeshi origin on August 18, 2005 from the Indian mission in Sweden.

The visa was extended earlier also for six months.

Taslima has expressed her desire for Indian citizenship which requires seven years stay in the country.

She has been living in exile for the past 12 years. She had to move to Sweden after she invoked the ire of fundamentalists in Bangladesh with her book 'Lajja' in 1993 in which she had recounted the torture of the minority Hindu community in Muslim-majority Bangladesh.

Besides ''Lajja'', Nasreen's four autobiographical books are also banned in Bangladesh as the government claims that her books contain anti-Islamic views.

In November, 2003, the West Bengal government banned the sale, distribution and collection of her book 'Dwikhandito', but it was later lifted by the Calcutta High Court in September 2004.

UNI