The night Faisal Arefin Dipan died concealed more than it revealed. It revealed the motive behind the attacks, which was to send a clear message to all: those who dare to bring out any books by the likes of Avijit Roy will be met with the same brutality as Dipan and Ahmedur Rashid Tutul. It revealed the shock of Dipan's family; it also revealed the pall of gloom cast over the whole community of writers and publishers.
But it concealed the fear that struck them all and how deep that fear ran in a publishing industry that has never seen its all-embracing openness shrink like this before. In other words, what that night concealed was the tremor felt across the literary and publishing spectrum, which has so far boldly, if not unassailably, kept itself uninvaded by this kind of censorship.
Despite many challenges and violent opposition at times, writers and publishers have written and worked more or less freely in this country. Books were banned, mostly on religious grounds, and bans were lifted eventually (Humayun Azad's Nari was banned in 1992 and the ban was lifted in 2000), except those imposed on works of one female author. A few writers even faced brief spells of incarceration on political grounds but none of these shook the freedom they enjoyed in terms of choosing writing or publishing content.
The first time the nation experienced a jolt like this was in 2004 when Humayun Azad was attacked not for his freethinking writing, but for two of his novels, Chhappanno Hazar Borgomile and Pak Sar Jamin Sad Bad, which were a searing indictment of Jamaat's role in 1971. Even then, although writers were shocked, nothing could unsettle their courage and they came out on the streets in large numbers to unequivocally condemn the attack.
Tags: attack on bloggers
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