And the award returned to...

Mona

This national debate on ‘award returning’ spree is only getting hotter with each passing day. Sahitya Akademi president Vishwanath Prasad Tiwari finally broke his silence on Monday saying, “Now people will think the protest is against Sahitya Akademi and will subsequently dilute the cause they have stood for…they should have found other ways to register their voices.” While one side of the party is taking Sahitya awardees who haven’t returned their honour to task; others find it ‘fishy’ that someone as distinguished a name as Nayantara Sahgal is protesting one single murder in a country. Two girls, Charu Kumar, an entrepreneur, and Sania Dutt, a student, play on different sides.

Literary freedom

In a democracy, every individual is entitled to his or her opinion; in India the recent bans and killings show us the reality. The shrinking space for free expression has created a toxic atmosphere. Many celebrated writers announced that they will return their Sahitya Akademi awards to protest against the government’s “onslaught on freedom of expression”.

Many in the literary fraternity have raised their voices against the murders of Kannada writer and Sahitya Akademi award winner MM Kalburgi and anti-superstition activists, Narendra Dabholkar and Govind Pansare, questioning the Akademis and the government’s silence. The dissenters in the literary fraternity have either surrendered their coveted awards or quit the Akademi in protest against ‘rising intolerance’ in the backdrop of the murders of noted rationalists as well as the Dadri lynching incident.

I feel the writers are justified in returning their ‘Sahitya Akademi Awards’ in a show of solidarity against the ‘growing intolerance towards difference of opinion’. For in a diverse country like India, tolerance is essential for a peaceful co-existence. It’s a justified way of protest because with writers backing out from the Akademi and giving up their awards, the Akademi loses its credibility. It shows that the literary community values their freedom to express more than state honours. Moreover, it will trigger the government to break their silence on such sensitive issues and the law will take its course to bring the perpetrators of such heinous crimes to book.

Saniya Dutt, B Tech, student

Great show

What a show have a few writers put up! Nayantara Sahgal claims that she is returning the award in the ‘memory of the Indians’ who have been murdered. Let me just jog her memory through some incidents - Emergency, Sikh riots, demolition of Babri Masjid, Punjab terrorism, Nandigram violence – strange she slept it through all. Now suddenly writers like Uday Prakash and Shashi Deshpande have woken up at the call of their conscience.

They seem so bothered by the threat to the harmony and secularism; where were their noble concerns when perpetrators of terror played havoc on our country and went unpunished only to meet their due under the current regime? Forget the common man; our soldiers were beheaded and that did not wake them up from their deep slumber even as the government kept sitting as a silent spectator? Weren’t Indians sentiments hurt during CWG scam? Are sentiments any more special now? Vajpeyi royally claims that he has been writing about rising violence from last one-and-a-half year, strangely he missed the violence the country experienced all the years before that.

Beef ban is now a threat to secularism, but do they even know it has been years that beef is banned for the Jain Festival in Mumbai. Was Modi exercising his powers without being in power then?

This award returning fad is just a gimmick aimed at gaining quick recognition. Now that they are at the fag end of their careers with nothing substantial to write, they are perhaps hoping to land some employment opportunity! It is sad the institution that bestowed them this honour doesn’t even stand with them on this protest. Trying to belittle the country premier, who is scoring miles for India in the international arena, is a game that a common man can see through all.

Charu Kumar, M Tech, entrepreneur

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