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Keep quiet and stay out of sight, India tells controversial writer

Last Updated: Friday, December 21, 2007 | 12:44 PM ET

India has told Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen to either remain under government security or leave the country.

Nasreen, who says she is under virtual "house arrest" in an undisclosed location, has been told she cannot return to her adopted home in Calcutta.

Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen, shown at a book launch in August 2007.Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen, shown at a book launch in August 2007.
(Associated Press)

"I am not allowed meet anybody. I am not allowed to step outside," she said. "I am a Bengali writer and when I was living in Calcutta I was moving around and nothing happened. I want to live in Calcutta. I love Calcutta," she said.

A senior official of the Ministry of External Affairs has laid out restrictions on her stay in India, Nasreen said in an interview on New Delhi TV on Friday.

Among them are a prohibition against returning to Calcutta and against appearing at public events in New Delhi, she said.

''I appeal to the government to change its mind,'' she said, adding that she wants to return to her home and resume living a normal life.

Nasreen was hounded out of Calcutta in November after violent protests against her by Islamic extremists.

The government for the state of West Bengal has announced it will not take responsibility for her if she returns to Calcutta and the federal government has said she cannot return because of security issues.

Nasreen, a feminist writer who has written about how religion oppresses women, particularly Islamic women, has been widely denounced as "un-Islamic" by local clerics.

She was driven from mostly Muslim Bangladesh in 1994 after publishing her novel Shame, depicting a Hindu family facing the ire of Muslims. The novel is banned in Bangladesh.

Last year India charged her with stirring up religious enmity and "hurting the feelings" of the Muslim minority.

The dominant Congress party has said no one who is allowed to stay in India should hurt the sentiments of the people.

However artists and theatre groups have come to her defence, saying her plight is an issue of freedom of expression.

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