Leader of Opposition L K Advani has said the treatment meted out to Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen is “a shame and blot on India”. He has asked the UPA Government to grant her resident status and free movement in the country.

“Like millions of my countrymen, I am shocked and outraged at media reports that the noted Bengali writer, Ms Taslima Nasreen, has been kept in virtual ‘house arrest’ at a secret place in Delhi and, worse still, that her health is affected by poor medical care. Both the Congress-led UPA Government at the Centre and the CPI(M)-led Left Front Government in West Bengal are responsible for her extraordinary plight. Both are guilty of practising the most perverse kind of politics of vote bank and appeasement of religious extremism,” the BJP leader said on Thursday.

Releasing a book—Secular Politics, Communal Agenda—by Prof Makhan Lal, Advani touched upon the issue of Ayodhya and Ram Mandir for the first time after he was announced as BJP’s prime minister candidate. He contrasted the situation under which Somnath temple was constructed and the impasse over Ayodhya. “Over the issue of Somnath temple, there was agreement across parties and leaders and it was a Government decision. Gandhi, Nehru and Patel endorsed the decision and nobody said it was against secularism. But by the time the demand for a temple at Ayodhya came about, the then PM Rajiv Gandhi could not take a similar decision because pseudo-secularism had gained prominence by then,” he said. Advani, now on a mission to expand his influence as wide and far as possible before the prime ministerial bid, was careful to avoid a further controversy over the issue.

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