Mohanjit-Akademi awards row nothing new, it started with Amrita Pritam

Vishav Bharti

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, December 9

When Amrita Pritam got Sahitya Akademi Award, she herself was part of the jury. It was just the second year of the prestigious award. Since then, there have been controversies galore.

Every year, following the announcements, accusations of bribes, favouritism and groupism surface against some old or new names. So was the case this year. When Sahitya Akademi announced the award for poet Mohanjit on Wednesday, he said the award came for him so late because the gang controlling the Punjabi section of the Akademi was against him.

The controversy regarding Punjabi poet Amrita Pritam was recounted by Khushwant Singh in her obituary: “My first disappointment came when she won the Sahitya Akademi Award for Punjabi literature. She was a member of the selection panel and cast the deciding vote in her own favour.”

However, the biggest controversy erupted when after winning the award for “Loona” at 30, Shiv Kumar Batalvi spilled the beans by his announcement: “It is not a big deal to get the award. You have to just treat the jury members with Rs-2,500 booze.” The award money was 5,000 in those days.

Notably, “Father of Punjabi prose” Gurbaksh Singh Preetlari, revolutionary poet Pash and folklorist and writer Devinder Satyarthi could never get the award.

It is a common view that the awards have lost their sheen in the past two decades. London-based Punjabi writer Amarjit Chandan says, “Ironically enough, year after year, the occasion of announcing the awards turns out to be a stimulation for initiating a debate on the increasing mediocrity. One of the Sahitya Akademi jurists confided in me that none of the finalists was up to the mark this year. It is high time that the country starts valuing a position of NOTA (‘’none of the above’’ vote) in the case of literary awards too as it is more important to maintain the sanctity of the award than merely continuing it with fillers. Such injudicious approach of the jury makes the prestige of awards dubious,” he says.

Sahitya Akademi Award recipient writer Gurbachan Bhullar agress. Till two decades back, the award would undisputedly go to authors who made Punjabi literature richer. “These days, when the names are announced, the common questions asked are: who is the writer and what did he write, a novel or a short story?”

Bhullar also endorses Mohanjit’s view of “gangs” controlling the Akademi and he is more specific when he says, “Delhi-based Punjabi literary critic Satinder Singh Noor (passed away in 2011) did the biggest damage to the prestige of these awards. It was his contribution that we heard the allegations of such a low level likely money exchange, government influence and favourtism in awards.”

 Caught in eye of storm

• Narinderpal Singh's Punjabi novel ‘Ba Mulahaza Hoshiarwhich’, alleged to be obscene, was awarded on the recommendation of Marxist literary critic Sant Singh Sekhon in 1976. Later, the award became an issue in the Parliament as well.
• It was alleged that pro-Khalistani poet Harinder Singh Mehboob got the award in 1991 after militants threatened jury member Amrita Pritam. It had astonished everybody as the Congress was in power and the book ‘Jhana Di Raat’ chosen for the award spit venom against Indira Gandhi.
• In 1957, 1958, 1960, 1963, 1966, 1970, no book could win the award either due to low quality or disagreement between jury members. 

(Source: Gurbachan Bhullar’s essay on Sahitya Akademi)