NEW DELHI (AFP) — Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen, who was hounded into hiding by hardline Islamists, said Friday she will remove a passage from an autobiography which some Indian Muslims found offensive.
Nasreen, who had been living in Kolkata since 2004, said she hoped the move would enable her to live in peace in India.
"I am withdrawing the controversial lines from my book Dikhandito," she told NDTV news channel.
"The book was written in 2002 based on my memories of Bangladesh in the 1980s during which time secularism was removed from the Bangladesh constitution," she said.
She was accused of hurting religious feelings and the book was banned in Bangladesh and India's neighbouring West Bengal state.
"Because I value secularism I wanted secularism to remain in the Bangladesh constitution," Nasreen said.
"I didn't write the book to hurt anybody's sentiments," the 45-year-old said without giving details of exactly what the passage mentions.
"Some people claim that sentiments have been hurt. It was not intended. I hope there will be no controversy any more and I will be able to live peacefully in India."
The federal government has pledged to protect Nasreen and moved her to a safe house outside New Delhi at the weekend after thousands of Muslims took to the streets in her adopted home Kolkata demanding her expulsion.
But it warned her not to make any statements that might "hurt the sentiments of our people" -- a reference to India's 140-million-plus Muslims.
Nasreen's announcement was welcomed by the Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind, one of the Muslim groups which had called for her expulsion.
"This is a good step and we are happy that good sense has prevailed," said the group's general secretary Siddiqullah Chowdhury, according to the Press Trust of India, adding the author was free to return to West Bengal.
But prominent Indian human rights activist Sujato Bhadra called Taslima's move to withdraw the passages "unfortunate".
"She has possibly done this under tremendous pressure. As Taslima wants to stay in India and particularly in Kolkata, she has decided to withdraw the controversial paragraphs," Bhadra said.
Extremists accused the author of blasphemy over her 1994 novel "Lajja" or "Shame," which depicts violence against minority Hindus by Muslim fundamentalists in Bangladesh.
They called for her execution for that and other works.
Nasreen fled her Muslim-majority homeland of Bangladesh in 1994 and has been living in Kolkata since 2004 after spending time in Europe and the United States.
The author, who was raised in a conservative Muslim family but now describes herself as a "secular humanist," says she longs to return to Kolkata, which is Bengali-speaking like her homeland.
She holds a Swedish passport but has been seeking permanent residence in officially secular India. So far the government has only granted her six-month visa extensions.
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