Welcome back, Taslima Nasrin

The invitation to Bangladeshi writerTaslima Nasrin to return to Kolkataafter nearly two decades to participate in a public event on August 1 is long overdue and enormously welcome. It is freighted with political symbolism. In 2007, the publication of Dwikhondito , the third instalment of Nasrin’s memoir, had led to protests, forcing the writer to move out of the city that had been her home since her exile from Bangladesh following the publication of her novel Lajja (1993). Whatever the government’s reasons now — the ruling BJP in West Bengal characterises it as a break from the “appeasement politics” of the TMC and Left — the invitation to her marks a heartening repudiation of what has been termed the heckler’s veto: When the loudest or most easily offended voices determine what others may read, watch or discuss. From Tamil author Perumal Murugan’s Madhorubhagan to Honey Trehan’s Satluj most recently, governments of various political persuasions have responded to outrage against art and artistes through pre-emptive censorship — book withdrawals, cancelled screenings, edits and cuts, and in some cases, criminal complaints against makers. In shielding citizens from discomfiting ideas, the boundaries of permissible speech get shrunk inexorably, leading to a narrowing of the public sphere. Nasrin’s work has pushed against the grain, refusing the consolations of neat binaries. She has written against religious fundamentalism, misogyny and the social arrangements that deny women autonomy over their own lives. Her candour has provoked discomfort, fierce disagreement and criticism. But the pushback to controversial or offensive ideas cannot be exile, exclusion or the threat of violence. The response should come through conversations. Ideas that unsettle certainties enlarge the moral and intellectual universes through which a society understands itself. The significance of the invitation to Nasrin, therefore, extends beyond one writer, or one occasion. It is a reminder that a democracy shows confidence in itself not by insulating citizens from ideas but by trusting them — even and especially when it is politically inconvenient or socially contentious to do so — to confront, own and debate them.