The man a foreign national of Indian origin arriving in India as a legal visitor is accepted by Indian government to enter into India but the same man is rejected in West Bengal by the Kolkata government of Mamata Banarjee. He was Sulman Rushdie coming to attend the Book Fair at Kolkata. By rejecting his entry into Kolkata the State government of Kolkata trampled under its dirty feet the freedom of an individual who is considered as the world renowned literary figure. Not only Rushdie’s freedom was curtailed but by this draconian act Mamata Banarjee displayed her Hitlerism which all the freedom loving civilised people in India and outside India must condemn as I do now thru this piece.
Bengal in general and Calcutta in particular was known to carry strong movement for the free thinking, free expressing and free moving. The great freedom loving people of India Rabindranath Tagore and Subash Chandra Bose who were the sons of this very Bengal that rejected Sulman Rushdie the free thinker citizen of this planet, were the making of free thinking movement of Bengali soil. By rejecting Rushdie the tin pot chief Minister of West Bengal Ms Mamata Banarjee degraded the greatness of Tagore, Bose and other well-known freedom loving free thinkers of Bengal.
Citing a silly reason of her inability to provide sufficient security for Rushdie is a Baby excuse. For one individual person Mamata’s government cannot provide bare minimum security then Mamata Bannarjee got no right to head her government in West Bengal. The author of Satanic Verses Sulman Rushdie since the Fatwa issued against him by Iranian Khomeini has travelled in many parts of the world even those parts where security risk for him was the worst yet nothing happened to him and only Kolkata is more risk oriented? Silly argument. Mamata Banarjee played this trick only to please some Islamic fundamentalists who are against Sulman Rushdie and thereby create a Muslim Vote Bank for her party during the next election.
Last week by banning Sulman Rushdie from entering Kolkata the government of West Bengal put not only government of India into a big shame but also all the free thinking people of India.
For the freedom movement of India Bengal created a very strong base and standing on that base men like Tagore and others challenged the mighty might of British Empire till free India was born. Is it not ironic that the same Bengal under the leadership of Mamata Bannarjee now destroyed the tradition of freedom in West Bengal? What freedom suppressor British afforded in India the free India denied in Kolkata.
A. Veronica Fernandes,
Kuwait.
