Lajja (Shame)

Changing tracks from office humour through Dilbert (or DilRAMbert...!!), I have decided to write about the very controversial novel ‘Lajja’, by Taslima Nasrin, the controversial, feminist, Bangladeshi writer.

Taslima Nasreen, the person, is by herself very prone to controversy amongst the Islamic Fundamentalists even before 'Lajja', which was her first major literary work, was published – it is hence no wonder that ‘Lajja’ further stoked the flames of communal hatred, much of it directed towards her as an individual.

The title of her book itself sends an ominous message – Lajja in Bengali means ‘shame’. Further, the book has 13 Chapters, each chronicling the 13 days of a downward spiral of hatred unleashed on a hapless Hindu minority family in Bangladesh. It captures the poignant plight of a Bangladeshi freedom fighter who fought for the birth of a nation, freed from the clutches of Pakistan in 1971 as a secular, democratic republic, and how it slowly transforms into the Islamic Republic of Bangladesh, unceremoniously tossing aside the principles of secularism.

The book begins with the shameful event of the demolition of Babri Masjid in Ayodhya on 06 December 1992, carried out by Hindu fundamentalists in India, and how its repercussions were faced by Hindu minorities in Bangladesh. The protagonist of the book is Sudhamoy Dutta, a retired government doctor living in Dhaka, Bangladesh, who was also a Bangladeshi freedom fighter. He had fought alongside fellow Bengalis (Muslims) to liberate the then region of East Pakistan from Pakistan. One understands from this book, how East Pakistan, as Bangladesh was called before 1971, separated by more than 1500 Kilometres of Indian territory, was vastly different from Pakistan – East Pakistanis considered themselves primarily Bengalis, and had aspirations of having Bengali as their national language, apart from believing in a unique cultural identity as 'Bengali Muslims'. This was obviously at odds with Pakistan, where everyone considered themselves Muslims first, having Urdu as their official language. Several other cultural and ethnic factors are also brought out in the book, articulating how the Bengali Muslims were altogether different from their Pakistani counterparts, except for their common religion. Sudhamoy, a Hindu, painfully realizes that hardly twenty years into independence, Bangladesh has, much to his sadness, simply set aside the lofty ideals of secularism and religious tolerance. Although the book is set around fictional characters, the background history, official statistics, figures and events are all purported to be real. Among various social aspects, one understands how frustrating and suffocating it can be for a person from a religious minority to live in a country which is not secular. Sudhamoy’s background as a Hindu freedom fighter is conveniently ignored by the state which gives importance to its Muslim citizens, and he is passed over several times for promotion. Schools in Bangladesh impart Islamic religious training, conveniently leaving out the sentiments of the other religions. Land laws are callously disregarded to favour Muslim majorities. As if all this is not enough already, the Babri Masjid demolition acts as a trigger to transform the covert suffocation of the Hindu minority by the Muslims into a blatant and unbridled outpouring of communal violence against them. All through the account, Sudhamoy vainly believes that his motherland will come to his rescue – he believes that secularism, one of the principles based on which his beloved Bangladesh was founded, will take care of him. His vain belief costs him his daughter, who is kidnapped by a bunch of local goons, never to be heard of again (perhaps she is gang raped and left to die – this is left to speculation in the book). In the thirteenth chapter, Sudhamoy realizes that all hope is lost, and decides that his family must move to India. The closing chapter captures vividly the severely hurt pride which Sudhamoy had to suppress all along – the betrayal that he feels as a freedom fighter who is let down by the very country whose freedom he fought for.

Several themes come out in this book – one is about how religious minorities become hapless sufferers when the state changes from being secular to a non-secular one favouring the majority religion. Another theme is on how rape is used as an instrument of inflicting not only physical damage on a woman, but also long lasting psychological damage. When I read the numerous instances of rape that are captured in this book, I could draw a parallel with the events during the Bosnian-Serbian conflict, where rape was very routinely resorted to as an ‘ethnic cleansing’ activity. Many a time during this conflict, women were simply raped repeatedly till they became pregnant, safeguarded till they reached a stage in pregnancy where abortion was not possible, then let out. The end-objective in all this seemed to be – if you can’t outnumber them, outbreed them....Lajja was not as ghastly as the Bosnian-Serbian conflict, but equally repulsive.

Taslima is an outspoken critic of the Sharia or Islamic law, an interpretation of which simply relegates the woman to the position of merely an object of pleasure, while at the same time making it convenient for men to divorce their wives while pursuing their amorous indulgences. Researching about Taslima reveals that she turned a critic because of the suffering she underwent during childhood – she was molested in childhood, and generally suppressed from pursuing her cultural interests simply because of her gender. She claims that she pursued medical education more on the compulsion of her parents, who wanted her to be marketable in the marriage market. Choosing to be a gynaecologist, she was witness to innumerable abortions for teenage girls in her clinic, which according to her, was an indication of how even teenage girls were not spared in this oppression. Those who did deliver babies were said to invariably gave out wails of despair when the baby was a girl – an indication of the extent of oppression that they are likely to undergo.

While Taslima appears to fight for and represent the oppressed woman in the Muslim religious framework, she has her own detractors as well, who believe that she is merely a publicity-seeker who relies on feminism and Islamic fundamentalism as her canvassing platform. Arguments against her are her own affinity for the opposite gender (she has been married and divorced thrice), and numerous instances during press meets where representatives of feminist organisations were ignored to the benefit of high profile media representatives, whose patronage was necessary for Taslima to achieve a wider publicity and coverage !

While the overall theme of the book is about the dangers of Islamic fundamentalism, religious fundamentalism of any nature is intolerable. Some sections of the Hindu community in India are equally prone to be oppressive towards minority religions, which were witnessed during the events post the Godhra massacre in Gujarat. Regardless of the religious affiliation of the victim, the despair is the same, as captured in this photograph below:

That was a Muslim man begging for his life and that of his family, when chased by Hindu mobs during the riots after the Godhra train massacre in Gujarat in 2002. Words are superfluous to describe the man’s plight, when his expression tells the entire story. This one image is enough to tarnish the image of India as a secular country. As a Hindu, whenever I see this photograph, I hang my head in shame when I realize that it was my own fellow Hindus who have resorted to such barbarism.

While I feel despondent whenever such events take place, I am still glad that I am an Indian, governed by the Indian constitution, the preamble of which declares that India shall be a sovereign, socialist, secular, democratic republic, guaranteeing me Justice (social, economic and political), Liberty (of thought , expression, religious faith, belief and worship), and Equality before the eyes of the Law. I JUST CANNOT even dream to live in 

any country where these are not the fundamental founding principles.....

I perfectly agree with what Taslima says in the opening page of her book:

Let another name for religion be humanism.