Here’s the trailer for Nirbashito.

It’s pretty powerful.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WCzm7zx9ew… Read the rest

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Finally released in Kolkata and on its way to the Alberta Film Festival is the award-winning Bangladeshi movie Nirbashito, which is based on Taslima. The English title is Banished.

The Times of India last December:

Churni Ganguly’s first directorial venture, Nirbashito, has been adjudged the best film in Delhi International Film Festival.

The script of the film, which is based on the life of banished Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen, has Churni playing the role of Tasleema, who, however has no screen name. In the film, the protagonist represents every women, which also tries to explain the tag line that accompanies the title of the film — A woman has no country.

The film, allegorically, tells the story

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This is from April. I didn’t see it then. I’m glad I didn’t – I was freaking out enough as it was. It’s the Daily Mail:

There is no hint of fear in her eyes as feminist writer Taslima Nasreen tells Mail Today that Bangladeshi terror group Ansarullah Bangla Team is plotting to cross over to India and then travel to the Capital to kill her.

The group takes its ideology from Anwar Al-Awlaki, a Yemen-based al-Qaeda activist, and has been involved in the murders of America-based writer Avijit Roy and blogger Washiqur Rahman last month for “criticising Islam”.

Taslima, if Indian intelligence agencies are to be believed, may very well be their next target.

“Members of the Ansarullah

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There’s a film about Taslima; it won an award. Well we can’t have that, can we.

Trinamool Congress Lok Sabha MP from Basirhat, Idris Ali has termed exiled Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasreen as a ‘loose charactered woman’ on Sunday.

“Taslima Nasreen is a loose charactered woman who plays the communal card. People who support her, eventually end up spreading communal tension,” said Ali. He also targeted author Salman Rushdie saying, “Rushdie was barred from entering West Bengal as this is a secular state and communal elements like him should be kept at bay.”

The communal card, for heaven’s sake. It’s Idris Ali and people like him who are doing that, not Taslima.

This apart, he lashed out at the

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The BBC Bangladesh World Service talks to Taslima about the murder and about the safety of freethinkers. Her segment starts at about 4:20 but the whole thing is interesting.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=GonrwhSKKHU… Read the rest

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Taslima has a guest post by a neuroscientist at MIT, Garga Chatterjee.

Many Bengalis take a lot of pride about Kolkata, as a centre for free thought and artistic expression. Kolkata, the so-called ‘cultural capital’, has demonstrated the increasing emptiness of the epithet, yet again. Taslima Nasreen, one of the most famous Bengali authors alive, had scripted a TV serial named ‘Doohshahobash’ ( Difficult cohabitaions) portraying 3 sisters and their lives – standing up to kinds of unjust behaviour that are everyday realities for the lives of women in the subcontinent. Nasreen has long lent a powerful voice to some of the most private oppressions that women face, often silently. The private channel where the serial was slotted ran a

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Taslima wrote a post about banning and censorship two days ago, when the axing of her serial was threatened but not yet a reality. Go read it and look at it; it’s full of pictures of Taslima on billboards advertising the serial. There was a huge buzz about this serial.

But suddenly everything is dead. Everybody is silent. The channel, the producers, the artists all are shocked.

The police and a bunch of Muslim fanatics both asking the channel to ban my TV serial. The funny thing is that the serial has not started going on air but fanatic Mullahs started claiming that my serial ‘could hurt the sentiments of the community’. Mullahs don’t know about the story of the

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