Taslima Nasrin is returning to Kolkata. But will Bangladesh ever end her exile?

After nearly two decades, Taslima Nasrin is returning to Kolkata.

The Bangladeshi-born writer is expected to attend a literary event at Kolkata’s Rabindra Sadan on August 1, marking her first visit to the city she was forced to leave in 2007 after some Muslim fundamentalists claimed that her autobiographical book Dwikhandito had hurt their religious sentiments.

For three years before that, the exiled Nasrin had lived in Kolkata, a city she described as her second home. She now lives in Delhi.

The organisers of the literary event next month have said that West Bengal Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari is expected to felicitate her – a remarkable political reversal for a writer who, under both the Left Front and the Trinamool Congress governments, was effectively unwelcome in the city.

Writer Shirshendu Mukhopadhyay and Finance Minister Swapan Dasgupta may also attend the event.

However, Nasrin’s return to Kolkata raises a more uncomfortable question: will the writer ever be able to return to the country of her birth – Bangladesh?

For now, the answer appears to be no.

Almost every major political dispensation in Bangladesh has had an opportunity to rewrite her story, yet every one of them has chosen not to.

Nasrin fled Bangladesh in 1994 when the Bangladesh Nationalist Party government led by Khaleda Zia was in power. She had faced death threats and criminal cases for...

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