Overview
- Nasrin has announced she will attend an anti‑fundamentalism literary programme at Rabindra Sadan on August 1 where she is expected to recite poems and speak about her years in exile.
- Three groups — Secular Mission, Paschimbonger Jonno and Human Rights Beyond Frontiers — are hosting the programme and say West Bengal chief minister Suvendu Adhikari has been asked to, and will, provide security for the author.
- The BJP is presenting Nasrin’s visit as proof of a changed political climate in the state while opposition figures accuse the organisers and the ruling party of using the event for partisan gain.
- Organisers and state officials say security arrangements are being prepared but specific deployment plans have not been disclosed and past unrest in 2007, which required Army deployment, underscores the risk of public agitation.
- Nasrin’s return revives long‑running debates about free expression and religious sensitivity: she fled Bangladesh after fatwas in 1994 and was asked to leave Kolkata in 2007 after violent protests over portions of her writing.