“My view on this issue is clear and categorical. I hold the Koran, the Vedas, the Bible and all such religious texts determining the lives of their followers as ‘out of place and out of time.’ We have socio-historical contexts in which these were written and therefore we should not be guided by their precepts. We have to move beyond these ancient texts if we have to make progress. In order top respond to our spiritual let humanism be our new faith.”
Clarification notwithstanding, the reproduction of the 9 May interview in newspapers in Bangladesh on 4 June, 1994 changed her life forever. Fundamentalists whose wrath she had long incurred launched a massive campaign and demanded that she be hanged in public. The Government of Bangladesh headed by Khaleda Zia (whose governments have historically been supported by the Jamaat-e-Islami and other fundamentalist groups) lodged a criminal case against her under section 295 (A) of the Bangladesh Penal Code for “outraging religious sentiments” with “deliberate” and “malicious” intent. Incidentally, the same clause in the Indian Penal Code was invoked against the secular cultural organization SAHMAT for allegedly depicting Ram and Sita as siblings in their exhibition Hum Sab Ayodhya after the demolition of the Babri Masjid. The same provision was also used to demand artist M.F. Hussain’s arrest in 1996 for allegedly drawing the goddess Saraswati in the ‘nude’. (The painting was made way back in 1976 but discovered that year by the Hindu Right through its reproduction in Vichar Mimansa.) 
My Girlhood was written by Nasrin in exile and was first translated into French. The English translation has been done from the Bengali version published by People’s Book Society of Calcutta which between July 1999 and June 2000 published eight reprints! Clearly, the first in a possible autobiographical series, My Girlhood, encompasses the first 13 years of her life. The book begins in 1971 with the resounding success of the Bangladesh Liberation War and ends with what was perhaps the most critical turning point in the young nation’s life - the brutal assassination of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib and his family. The narrative moves between multiple chronologies as Nasrin effortlessly travels back and forth to describe the childhood of her parents, the circumstances of her birth and her own growing up years. Her father Rajab Ali was the handsome son of a poor farmer, who through steely determination and hard work became a respected doctor in Mymensingh. Rajab Ali’s career benefited greatly from the patronage of the author’s nana (maternal grandfather) whose daughter Idulwara Begum (Idun) he finally married. Dark skinned and rather plain, Idun spends her married life feeling inadequate as the handsome Rajab Ali’s wife. While her husband dutifully provides for his family, he lacks any romantic or erotic inclinations toward her. When he is transferred to a job in Rajshahi, Idun “having seen Dilip Kumar and Madhubala on the silver screen” has no difficulty writing him long letters: “My dearest love, how are you? When will you come back to me? I don’t like living without you. I writhe like a hunted bird shot by an arrow. Please come and take me away. We can live happily with our children...I know I am not worthy of you. I haven’t got the kind of knowledge and intellect that you do.... I may have nothing else, but I have you. You are my happiness my peace. I want nothing else in this world.”
To letters like this, Rajab Ali replies:
“Do not spend more than a couple of takas on groceries everyday. If you run short of money, get your provisions on credit from Monu Mia’s shop. Keep track of everything you buy.” 
Very soon, Idun’s worst fears come true. Rajab Ali starts seeing the pretty and voluptuous Razia Begum and Idun lives in constant fear of being abandoned or having to share her husand with a co-wife. When all attempts on her part fail to win her husband back, she turns to religion for comfort. Her moment of revelation arrives with Fajli khala telling her that the “colour of our skin is something Allah has given us. We must be happy with what we have.” To the dispirited and insecure Idun, this observation comes as a huge support: “Allah was responsible for the colour of her skin. If anyone jeered at her because of her dark complexion, it amounted to mocking Allah himself.” 
Replete with a rich density of sights, sounds and experiences, My Girlhood makes for engrossing reading. For those familiar with her other works, the book is particularly insightful in that it resonates with names, phrases and images that recur in her other works. Her characteristic plain-speak is here deployed to explore those immediately around her including herself. This self-revelatory book quietly dismantles myths around the institutions of marriage, family and religion with irony, humour and a certain matter-of-factness. There are no villains or heroes in this narrative. None is valourized nor entirely condemned. Not even the two uncles who abuse her sexually as a child or her own father who drives her mother to the dark recesses of religion and physically brutalizes her on one occasion. In this powerful narrative, ruthless honesty and deep compassion coexist in shocking juxtaposition. Perhaps the only irredeemably dark character in My Girlhood is Peer Amirullah “who had left India to live in a Muslim country” (East Pakistan) and remained perfectly safe during the turmoil of 1971 by befriending those hostile to the freedom struggle. “It was with the Peer’s blessings that some of his followers attacked ten Hindu houses in Naumahal and set them on fire, shouting, “Allahoo Akbar!” When they did that the Peer Sahib patted their backs approvingly and said, “There is nothing wrong with this. It is simply an effort to save Islam from being attacked by the enemies.”
Nasrin’s mother becomes a devoted disciple of Amirullah. The family watches in horror as the affectionate and maternal Idun transforms herself into religious fanatic who begins to look upon her own family as a bunch of infidels awaiting perdition in hell. She stops eating with everyone claiming that it was sinful to eat at the dining table as “Jews and Christians did that.” For Taslima, Amirullah embodies the heartlessness of blind religiosity. Under the Peer’s influence, Idulwara “forgot many things” including her childhood friend Amala who happened to be a Hindu.
“She forgot the time that she had attended Hindu festivals with her friends, and bought toys and dolls at their fairs. She had offered sweets after Lakshmi Puja at a friends house and before that stood hand-in-hand with all the others to watch Durga puja in their area.”
The young Taslima argues with her mother against Amirullah’s cruel dictates. Why should innocent children be damned because they happened to be born in households other than Muslim? How were they to be blamed for where they were born? Besides, the young girl asks her mother, “You have often said yourself that nothing can possibly happen on earth unless Allah wills it? So it was Allah who wanted the child to be born in a non-Muslim family. If anyone has to be blamed, it should be Allah. Surely it’s all His fault? It’s not right to put the blame on a perfectly innocent child.” 
Nasrin’s lessons in tolerance are impelled not by dissent alone. Her father counters Idun’s religiosity through strict discipline around studies. Emotionally distant from her father, Taslima feels an intellectual affinity with him. “I didn’t feel at all close to Baba. If he came anywhere near me, I felt I was being approached by a giant and my life was in danger. Yet when he told me that high fever was a symptom of disease, that diseases were caused by germs, and that the medicines he gave me had properties to kill those germs, I found his words perfectly reasonable.”
Rajab Ali’s almost destructive desire to control his family emerges as much from paternalistic authoritarianism as from an obsessive desire to educate his children. While Idun retreats more and more into religion, Rajab Ali’s obsession intensifies. Impelled by her own desire to study and her father’s strict discipline Taslima encounters a bigger and more imaginative world through books. Boro mama (elder maternal uncle) also shapes Nasrin’s secular sensibilities. Having studied in a madarssa, therefore well versed in Arabic, boro mama has no hesitation in challenging religious tenets or refusing to eat sacrificial meat. He is perplexed by religious practices like animal sacrifice (“Those animals could have been given to the farmers. Many of them can’t plough the land because they don’t have oxen.”) He is equally perplexed by the absurdities of everyday life. Like when Nasrin’s uncle Hashem raises an alarm by pretending to fall into the well. Boro mama looks at this absurd spectacle with his mouth hanging open: “That was a game? And it was supposed to be funny...Is Hashem mad?” 
Despite the dark shadow cast by familial authority, class hierarchies and religious bigotry, Nasrin’s childhood memories are not dismal. Her canvas is peopled with a diversity of colourful characters, funny anecdotes and passages of pleasure and desire. One of the most enchanting sections in the book deals with Nasrin’s first schoolgirl crush on a senior student called Runi. In a self-revealing and uninhibited chapter, Nasrin describes her first falling in love.
“You’re very shy, aren’t you? You hardly ever speak. Why don’t you come to my hostel one day? We could talk for as long as you like!” said Runi, taking my arm and pulling me closer. Her body smelt of fresh flowers. It was a like a fairy tale. Runi was a flower-a jasmine perhaps-turned into princess by some magic spell. I began trembling. My heart thudded. Somewhere deep within my being I could feel a hundred lotuses unfurl. .... Runi would place her finger on my chin, speak in her slightly husky voice, and the few loose strands of hair around her forehead would blow gently in the breeze. I would lay my head on her breast and inhale the scent of jasmine.” 
Nasrin’s first exhilarating encounter with a secular, democratic movement happens when, during a stretch of severe famine in the country, a Communist Party rally moves through the neighborhood collecting rice for starving masses. The intoxicating slogan pushes mother and daughter to break the padlock on the drum where Rajab Ali had been saving rice for his family. They hand over fistfuls of rice to the band of young men who had pledged to feed the hungry. All hell breaks lose when Rajab Ali returns home. Idun takes the blame on herself putting an unexpected end to the uproar. “ A new realization began taking shape in my mind” writes Taslima, “ I had committed no sin. For the first time in my life, I created a belief, all by myself.”
It is commonly said that Taslima Nasrin is an overrated writer. This notion is so strong that it is repeated unthinkingly by people who can neither read nor write Bengali! It is also said that her books sell because of their explicit discussion of sex and sexuality. (Usually such an allegation says something about the reader but nothing about the writer.) Future generations will not dispute that Nasrin has been one of the most important Bengali writers of contemporary times. Moving away from ornate and euphemistic rhetoric, Taslima Nasrin deploys language that is direct, even ruthless. Her feminist politics emerges not out of victomolgy but rage. Her sexual explicitness is daring and unembarrassed. These traits are neither traditionally feminine nor desirable by Bengali canonical standards. Therefore, her writings assail the canon itself and problematizes the notion of what constitutes “literary merit”. Gopa Majumdar’s excellent translation captures well the spirit of the book. Yet, inevitably much is lost in the process of translation. Take the title for example. “Amar Meyebela” is a radical assault on the normative cheleyebela (boyhood) that is used to describe the childhood of both girls and boys. While being an accurate translation, “My Girlhood” fails to carry the cultural and political reverberations of the Bengali _expression. The original is written in the East Bengali dialect with its delightful turn of phrases and inimitable humour. (This dialect itself challenges Bengali “literaryness” in multiple ways.) Moreover, the non-Bengali reader loses out on those many references - the stray lines from poems and songs that instantly evoke a world of cultural and literary associations. However, I have one grouse against the translation. Majumdar seems to take the brazen edge off Taslima’s sexual explicitness. Words like “willie” and “bonking” do not express the sexually explicit colloquialisms that Nasrin uses in the Bengla original. 
Finally, Kali cannot be congratulated enough for their courage in deciding to publish this most significant feminist book.