Won't call India intolerant because of few incidents: Taslima Nasreen

NEW DELHI: Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen today said "some bad incidents" did not amount to India being called " intolerant" and those indulging in them should be "educated" to be more inclusive.

The author condemned the recent mob lynching in Jharkhand where two cattle traders were killed and hanged, the Dadri lynching incident last year and the killing of rationalists Govind Pansare, Narendra Dabholkar and M M Kalburgi.

"It is not intolerance but a heinous crime to kill people for eating beef or for having different ideas. But, because of some bad incidents, I don't want to call 1.24 billion people of India intolerant. Some people are intolerant everywhere," she said.

Nasreen was speaking at an event organised by CII Young India here where former IPS officer Kiran Bedi and transgender activist Laxmi Narayan Tripathi were among the other speakers on the panel.

The 53-year-old Bangladeshi writer, who has been living in self-exile in India after incurring wrath of fundamentalists back home over a novel written by her in 1994, said that she did not want to call India intolerant because "Indian laws and constitution are tolerant."

"Many people in Indian society like any other society are intolerant. It is a misogynistic patriarchal society where most men are intolerant towards women, upper caste people are intolerant against lower caste people, rich people are intolerant against poor people, heterosexual people are intolerant against homosexual and transgender people," she said.

According to her, it was "not unusual" to have some intolerant people in a country.

"It is not very unusual that some people are intolerant but those people should be educated. We should teach them not be intolerant. And there are good laws and they can be punished," she said.