Taslima Nasrin speaks on citizenship

WRITE OR WRONG? Taslima Nasrin makes no bones about admitting her rebellious nature.

        

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Taslima Nasrin: Yes.

Karan Thapar: When I say enemy should I in fact be saying do you hate religion?

Taslima Nasrin: You know there are many people who believe in religion. I do not hate those people. I consider them as human being. But they believe in religion – that religion itself is against women. It’s not only the fundamentalists. Religion actually was created by men for their own interest. Yes some people can believe in religion I don’t object it but the thing is that we should not practice religion because it’s against humanity, against humanism, against human rights, against women’s rights, against freedom of expression…

Karan Thapar: You are going even further than Marx ever went. Marx described religion as the sigh of the oppressed creature, as the heart of a heartless world, as the soul of soulless conditions. You are saying something quite different. You are saying it’s against humanity.

Taslima Nasrin: It’s against humanity.

Karan Thapar: And you don’t say this for effect.

Taslima Nasrin: Because you know if women are oppressed by old religions and if you do not believe in women’s rights then you do not believe in human rights, then you do not believe in humanism.

Karan Thapar: But your critics say that you are only saying this to attract attention, that you are only saying this to give yourself publicity to make yourself controversial…

Taslima Nasrin: No I don’t need publicity. It’s a dangerous thing to say. The fundamentalist issued fatwa against me, they set price on my head and I couldn’t live in my own country I had to live in exile for more than 12 years.

Karan Thapar: So you sincerely believe all these things?

Taslima Nasrin: I sincerely believe all these things.

Karan Thapar: All right, let's come to something else that your critic say. Let's come to your autobiographies. You have gone out of your way in your autobiographies to give explicit details of your sexual liaisons without consulting the other party and without carrying about other party’s right of privacy. How do you justify that except on the grounds of providing ‘forgive me cheap titillation’?

Taslima Nasrin: You know I wrote my autobiography and I wanted to tell everything what happened to me everything.

Karan Thapar: But what about the other party, doesn’t the other party have a right to some privacy.

Taslima Nasrin: They didn’t tell me that they need privacy.

Karan Thapar: Do they need to tell you?