Sahitya Akademi calls emergency meeting to decide strategy

GORAKHPUR: An emergency meeting of the Sahitya Akademi’s executive board has been called in New Delhi on October 23 to discuss the issue of writers returning their awards and resigning from the literary body over ‘growing intolerance’ in the country.

“A regular meeting of the board, comprising eminent writers of different languages as its members, was scheduled to be held in December, but the ongoing crisis in the literary world forced the Sahitya Akademi to call a meeting urgently. The future course of action will be decided on the basis of the decision taken at the meeting,” said Sahitya Akademi president Vishwanath Tiwari at his residence in Gorakhpur on Monday.

Tiwari had earlier on Saturday denounced the move by the writers to quit the Sahtitya Akademi and to return their awards.

He had said the move would weaken the literary body that required the assistance of eminent writers for its smooth functioning.

He had also said he would make a written request to the writers not to quit the Akademi and not to return their awards that they had earned due to their outstanding literary work.

Till now, 15 writers have returned their awards to the Akademi since Hindi writer Uday Prakash first did so last month over the killing of Kannada scholar M.M. Kalburgi.

In another blow to the Akademi, Kannada writer Aravind Malagatt resigned from the fraternity on Sunday.

Earlier, eminent writer Nayantara Sahgal and former Lalit Kala Akademi chairperson Ashok Vajpeyi had returned their Sahitya Akademi awards to protest the ‘growing intolerance’ in the country.