Against the historical background of India’s partition and the splitting off of Bangladesh from Pakistan in 1971, the paper addresses the following issues:
(a) How a postcolonial nation like Bangladesh, which was founded on the principles of democracy and secularism, has turned Islamic fundamentalist since its independence;
(b) How the Bangladeshi writer Tasleema Nasreen, who belongs to the majority Muslim community, gives expression to the call of her conscience by taking on the theme, in her novel Lajja (Shame), of Hindu minority persecution in an otherwise democratic nation, Bangladesh, in whose foundation Hindus played no less significant part;
(c) How Tasleema had been forced to live in exile first in Sweden, where she lived for over nine years, and then in Kolkata, the capital of India’s Marxist-ruled state West Bengal, where she has been living since 2002. Unfortunately, the exiled writer has recently been physically attacked in Hyderabad by a Muslim fundamentalist group, Majlese Ittehadul Muslimeen, during the release of the Telugu version of her novel Shodh.