People bothered about atrocities in Palestine should focus on wrongs nearer home, says Taslima Nasrin

Taslima Nasrin, a life-long rebel, believes minorities in Bangladesh should be equally concerned about as those in Palestine. She condemns all atrocities and is fighting against injustice. She has won awards for her writings which expose hypocrisy and religious practices. Despite economic development, Bangladesh is still witnessing a rise in fundamentalism. Ms. Nasrin is finishing a book on medical mistreatment and has a new collection of poetry. She is fighting for justice and equality in her homeland.

A life-long rebel, Bangladeshi poet Taslima Nasrin, believes that those of her compatriots who are bothered about atrocities against Palestinians should also be equally bothered about the plight of minorities in their own country.

At 62, the spark within Ms. Nasrin, which saw her defying convention and writing to expose hypocrisy and "misogynistic" religious practices in her society, has not died down and she strongly believes she has a duty to continue the "good fight" against injustice wherever and whenever she finds it.

In a free-wheeling interview to PTI, Ms. Nasrin said on October 15, "I hear that my fellow Bangladeshi citizens are very agitated about atrocities on Palestinians and some even wish to go Palestine to help them. I personally condemn any atrocity anywhere in the world including on Israelis and Palestinians.

"However, I would like to point out that if my countrymen are so concerned about atrocities and the stream of refugees created by attacks in Palestine, then their conscience should also be disturbed when minorities in Bangladesh are attacked even today and many are forced to leave their lands to become refugees elsewhere." Last month, an octogenarian poet from the Hindu community was beaten up in a long list of similar attacks in Bangladesh. In August 2023, a human rights watch report by an organisation ‘Shrishti o Chetona’ highlighted that "attacks on temples and other community properties" or general anti-minority slurs, threats of "expulsion from the country and abuse" were among incidents which were reported.

"Despite the impressive economic development which my motherland has seen, Bangladesh is still witnessing a rise in fundamentalism. Gender imbalance continues to be a factor. Rank communalists are being given public and political space," said the acclaimed poet, who has in the past won the Simone de Beauvoir Prize and the Sakharov Prize.

Ms. Nasrin’s writings won critical acclaim and global attention in the early 1990s. However, her radical writings exposing hypocrisy as well as fundamentalism, also infuriated the orthodox clergy in her homeland, some of whom passed ‘fatwas’ against her, forcing her to flee to Europe and the US.

She later moved to India and now lives in Delhi.