Punjabi writer Dalip Kaur Tiwana returns her Padma Shri

Gagan K Teja

Tribune News Service

Patiala, October 13                           

Eminent Punjabi writer Dalip Kaur Tiwana announced she would return her Padma Shri award as a mark of protest against the growing attacks on freedom of speech in the country.

Tiwana, a novelist and short-story writer, received the Padma Shri in 2004 for Literature and Education. A recipient pf numerous awards at regional and national level, she is a retired is a professor of Punjabi from Punjabi University, Patiala.

“One cannot crush the voice of rebellion. What is happening on India is beyond tolerance. Returning these awards will at least make intellectual people think as to what is wrong on country,” she said.

Tiwana joins the growing chorus of authors protesting the incendiary atmosphere in the country due to increasing communal intolerance and attacks on free speech.

Eight Punjabi writers — Surjit Patar, Waryam Sandhu, Baldev Singh Sadaknama, Jaswinder, Darshan Buttar Gurbachan Bhullar, Ajmer Singh Aulakh and Atamjit Singh— are among the 22 authors who have returned their Sahitya Akademi awards in the past week alone.

Kannada rationalist MM Kalburgi, 77, was shot dead by two men at his house in Dharwad, northern Karnataka — often considered the state's cultural capital — on August 30. Kalburgi’s murder came six months after progressive thinker, left-wing politician and author Govind Pansare died of gunshot wounds in Mumbai. The killings were condemned as attack on free speech.

In August 2013, Narendra Dabholkar, rationalist author from Maharashtra, was shot dead in Pune when he was out for a morning walk. Pansare’s murder, who was also similarly killed, led police to believe there was a link between the killings.

Recently, 50 year-old Mohammed Akhlaq was beaten to death in Bishada village in Uttar Pradesh’s Dadri after romours that he had beef spread through the village. The incident caused outrage and evoked widespread condemnation.