As `vote-bank’ keeps Bengal majors silent on Taslima issue, `bigots likely to get edgy’
KOLKATA: As Taslima Nasreen’s residential permit visa is expected get into trouble with new BJP-led NDA Government unlikely to extend it, it also exposes to what extent controversial exiled Bangladeshi writer “is virtually disowned by all here.’’
In Bengal political majors were left cold by BJP-led NDA Government’s decision, like it happened in 2007, the year when global slowdown began!While the UPA I with whom CPI(M) had had a warm political relation, persuaded Congress to shift her out of Kolkata as fundamentalists threatened her and the peace.
“We did not support CPI(M)-led Left Front or Congress then because we really liked everything she wrote and controversies they generated, but we protested as we believed yielding to religious fundamentalists on any issue is bad,’’ said a former Left-leaning intellectual.
But as turn of event would have it, CPI(M) was helped out by friendly Congress then with Trinamool Congress remaining silent and Nasreen was shifted out of the city.Only politician who sent disturbing political waves, was Narendra Modi who publicly (to embarrass secular Left) said: If they could not protect her, `Gujarat can give her a place and protection.’
“Now look at the paradox, essentially Taslima who lost her gloss over the years, nobody is much bothered in changed socio-cultural trends set off by economically upwardly moving middle-class and tribe of politicians in a reform-driven society, but what is important that there’s no one to protest Governments’ yielding to vice of vote-bank politics,’’ said a political columnist.
