LUCKNOW — The Forward Bloc (FB), a constituent of the Left alliance supporting the United Progressive Alliance at the Centre, has come out openly against the stay of controversial Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen in Kolkata.West Bengal Assembly Deputy Speaker B.P. Ghosh, who received a memorandum from nine Muslim organisations here yesterday, said that the FB would press for her deportation from India so that nobody should be allowed to hurt the feelings of other people. Naib Imam Eidgah and member of All India Muslim Personal Law Board, Maulana Khalid Rashid led the delegation of Muslim organisations, including the Jamat-e-Islami, the Ulema Council of India and the Jamiat-e-Ulema, to demand the cancellation of Taslima’s extended visa in India.
Ghosh, who was here to meet the Uttar Pradesh Assembly Speaker Sukhdeo Rajbhar, said: “Secular society does not allow attack on other religions and people are free to have their own faith. I will forward the memorandum to the government for action. I will ask the Centre to pack her off to Bangaldesh.”
"People should be cautious in their free expression so that it does not lead to communal trouble," he added.
| Fred noted elsewhere tonight how freedom of thought is the most essential and fundamental freedom: protect that and all your other freedoms follow. Taslima should have, in a country that calls itself a 'democracy', the right to be insulting to another religion, as long as she understands that she might be insulted in turn. What the folks in this article want isn't the right and opportunity to respond, they want her dead. To the extent they can kill/silence/deport her, India isn't yet the democracy that it needs to be. |