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Exiled Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen said Thursday she had received permission to live in India for another six months but that she would like now to become an Indian citizen.
Nasreen's residency permit expired Wednesday but the writer said she had been granted a six-month extension by the Indian home ministry.
The doctor-turned-writer fled Bangladesh after the publication of her book "Lajjya" or "Shame" in 1994 that was critical of the treatment of women in the country and earned her the wrath of Islamic fundamentalists.
The 43-year-old said she was relieved media reports that the government was planning to give her a tourist visa instead of residential rights were unfounded.
"I was shocked when I received a number of telephone calls from different parts of the country yesterday that my residential permit was cancelled," she told AFP in the eastern Indian city of Kolkata, capital of West Bengal state.
"My future would have been uncertain if my residential permit was not granted," she added, explaining that as a tourist she could have been asked to leave the country at any time.
But, she said, she was concerned the permit had only been granted for six months not for a year and she hoped to be granted citizen status.
"I would like to become an Indian citizen. I feel at home in Kolkata. People here speak Bengali and I speak Bengali."
Nasreen, who lives with relatives and a pet cat, was quoted in the Hindu newspaper Thursday as saying she had begun "digging my roots" in Kolkata.
"I am a Bengali writer and I would like to live on in surroundings imbued by Bengali culture," she said.
Her application for citizenship last year was turned down.
In India, too, Nasreen's writing has stirred controversy, with West Bengal's communist-led government banning "Dwikhandita" (Divided), a volume of her multi-part autobiography, in 2003.
The ban was imposed after religious groups and Muslim writers complained that the book would provoke sectarian strife but was lifted the following year after a court battle.
Noorul Rahman Barkati, a leading Muslim cleric in West Bengal, in June demanded Nasreen be expelled from India for her comments on Islam and offered a reward of 50,000 rupees (1,074 dollars) to anyone who would blacken her face.
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AFP 171104 GMT 08 06
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