A 17 year old Muslim girl has shocked local Islamic fundamentalists, and brought a fatwa on her head, by publishing parts of a sexually explicit diary online. 

‘She is a brilliant young writer, currently the darling of the Asian alternative literary scene, and hailed, in India, as the new Anais Nin.

‘She drew the wrath of the Islamic community, in Mumbai, India, by circulating Xerox copies of her diaries, about her sexual relationship with a 70 year old British man, among her many admirers in New Delhi and Mumbai.

‘Then, when chapters of the diary started appearing online, at the end of March, the family Iman issued a fatwa, a death sentence, her family ostracized, and is asking for charges of obscenity against her in India.

Dion started writing at the age of fourteen, inspired by American author Henry Miller and the diaries of his erstwhile lover, French writer Anais Nin, and soon attracted literary, religious and political, attention in Kathmandu, Nepal, and Mumbai, India.

The diary is an inquiry into the nature of reality, with sharp, and often vitriolic criticism, and comment, on various social ills.

Dion says “I want to break with existing literary forms, similar to Henry Miller and Anais Nin, and develop a new type of writing, a mixture of novel, autobiography, social criticism, free association, and philosophical reflection. I call it Viderism, from Vider l’esprit, or Empty Mind’.

However this is unlikely to appease her Islamic critics, or the lawmakers in India.

In 1964, Mumbai bookseller Ranjit Udeshi was prosecuted for selling an ‘unexpurgated’ copy of D H Lawrence’s ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’, and, in 1985, Bengali author Samaresh Bose was charged with obscenity, for his novel ‘Prajapati’, but, successfully defended the case.

India’s obscenity law, Section 292, 1969, says ‘A book, pamphlet, paper, writing, drawing, painting, representation, figure, or any other object, shall be deemed to be obscene if it is lascivious, or appeals to the prurient interest, or if it’s effect tends to deprave and corrupt …’

Says Dion ‘As I was fourteen at the time, and 17 years old now, I suppose a Muslim girl having an ongoing sexual relationship with a 70 year old British man might well fall into that category’.

Dion is presently in hiding in North India.

Try these!

http://erotic.adventures.tripod.com

http://dions.diaries.tripod.com