68 Quotes by Taslima Nasrin

People don’t leave their homeland simply because governments stage events. One’s native land is not like the soil we put in flowerpots, where we pour water and fertilizer and then change the soil after an interval.

Aggressive, crazed Hindus had broken the Babri Masjid and the Hindus of Bangladesh were expected to atone for the wrongs done by those people.

If any religion allows the persecution of the people of different faiths, if any religion keeps women in slavery, if any religion keeps people in ignorance, then I can’t accept that religion.

Those who are creating the riots are not in tune with their religion. They want to plunder and destroy. Don’t you know why the sweet shops get ravaged? People hanker after sweets. And gold shops too, because of greed for gold. It’s the criminals and hoodlums who are on this spree of loot and plunder. There’s really no conflict between the communities.

Jonathan Swift: ‘We have enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.

The Bengalis saw endless bloodshed and trouble from 1947 to 1971 and this culminated in the Liberation War of 1971. The blood of 3 million Bengalis helped earn this freedom and also proved that religion could never be the foundation of a national identity. Language, culture and history provide the foundations for a national identity.

According to Abdul Kalam Azad, ‘It is one of the greatest frauds on the people to suggest that religious affinity can unite areas which are geographically, economically, linguistically and culturally different.

Riots mean fights – a conflict between one community and another is called a riot. But we cannot call these riots – these were attacks by one community on another. Torture. Persecution.

If I say that I’m educated and was jobless in Dhaka, that I want to work here, build myself a healthy, beautiful life, the kind of life that everyone dreams of, they’d just throw me out of the country. Political asylum they may just allow, but economical asylum – never!