Friday February 18, 12:51 AM
Facing death threats from hardline Islamic groups in her homeland, exiled Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasrin on Thursday applied for Indian citizenship saying her country has closed the doors on her, a news report said.
Press Trust of India quoted Nasrin as saying that she has faxed a letter to India's Home Minister Shivraj Patil requesting Indian citizenship or a residential permit. There was no immediate response by the Indian government.
Nasrin is visiting Calcutta, the capital of India's West Bengal state. She is currently living in exile in Sweden.
Last year, she researched secularization and woman's emancipation in Islamic countries at Harvard University in the United States, PTI said.
Nasrin fled Bangladesh in 1994 when Islamic extremists threatened to kill her after an Indian newspaper quoted her as demanding changes to the Islamic holy book, the Quran, to give women more rights. She denied making the statement.
"It is my love for Bengali language. How can I stay away from Bengali milieu and West Bengal? Living in West Bengal would help me in my writings," PTI quoted her as saying.
India's West Bengal state borders Bangladesh and people on both sides speak the Bengali language.
"My love for the language and the people of West Bengal is all what prompted me to apply for Indian citizenship," she said.
"After all, my own country has slammed the doors on me. I could not return there despite several attempts in the past. So, I had to be in West Bengal," Taslima said.
Last year, the Bangladesh government banned her Bengali-language book, Shei Shab Andhakar _ or Those Dark Days _ published in West Bengal state for what it said were objectionable comments about Islam and Prophet Mohammad.
Nasrin's autobiography, KA, was banned in Bangladesh two years ago after the country's leading poet, Syed Shamsul Haq, filed a defamation lawsuit alleging the book wrongly portrayed him as a playboy.
