Akademi condemns murders
■ Writer and anti- writer protests held
Yielding to unrelenting protests by writers, the Sahitya Akademi finally broke its silence and strongly condemned the killing of Kannada writer M. M. Kalburgi and others while urging litterateurs to take back awards they have returned even as protests and counter protests were held outside its headquarters.
As writers held a silent march against the Sahitya Akademi, another group of people staged a counterprotest in the national capital on Friday, alleging that the move by authors to return awards was “motivated by their vested interests” and that the literary body should not buckle under “pressure”.
The Akademi took to pacifying the authors because they accused it of not speaking out against the killings of writers and rationalists, besides on
incidents like the Dadri lynching and the ink attack on Sudheendra Kulkarni.
At an emergency board meeting to discuss recent developments, the Akademi expressed solidarity with the writers and urged those authors who had returned awards to take them back and appealed to those who had stepped down from various Akademi posts to take back their resignations.
The Akademi is “deeply pained and strongly condemns the murder of Prof. M. M. Kalburgi and the other intellectuals and thinkers. As the only autonomous institution of Indian literature in all its diversities, the Akademi firmly supports the writers’ right to freedom of expression in all the languages of India and condemns any atrocity against any writer any- where in the country,” it said in a resolution.
Writers who have returned their Sahitya Akademi awards marched in protest ahead of the cultural body’s emergency meeting to discuss the resignation of authors from the Akademi.
The Akademi also asked the state and Central governments to take immediate action to bring the culprits to book and ensure the security of writers now and in the future. “The Akademi appeals to state and Central government to take steps to prevent such incidents in the future,” Krishnaswamy Nachimuthu, an executive committee board member from Tamil Nadu, said on emerging from the meet, which was attended by 20 out of 24 executive council members. “All writers stand together in their decision to condemn the killings,” Nachimuthu said. Ahead of the meeting several writers and their supporters, sporting black gags and armbands, held a solidarity march here and submitted a memorandum to the Akademi chair. “We are witnessing a rise in intolerance against writers and artists. Like it happened at Film Institute in Pune, awards are being returned. Some claimed it is ‘ manufactured’. What sort of manufacturing? Where is such a factory where writers are manufactured? We have nothing to throw at the establishment and the Akademi except our awards,” poet Keki N. Daruwalla said.
English writer Gita Hariharan said, “It is a sad day that writers and artists have to walk with so much police to an institution which supposedly belongs to us. The protest is not just against what happened to Kalburgi but against a series of incidents that are now hounding writers.”
The counter- protest — alleging that the move by authors to return awards was “motivated by their vested interests” and urging the literary body not to buckle under pressure — was led by Janmat, with participation by ABVP activists. They, too, submitted a memorandum to the Akademi questioning the motive of the writers.
K. Satchidanandan, who had resigned from all positions in the Sahitya Akademi stating that it “failed in its duty to stand with the writers and to uphold freedom of expression guaranteed by the Constitution”, did not attend Friday’s meeting.
The others who skipped the meeting were Lalit Mangtrata, Prem Pradhan and Balchand Nemade. Another board member, present at the meeting, said, “There is a process for resignation but no process of returning the awards. We have decided to appeal to them to reconsider their decision.”
The Akademi is now set to meet on December 17. It had been forced to call an emergency meeting after at least 36 writers, including leading names like Nayantara Sahgal, Ashok Vajpeyi, Uday Prakash and K. Veerabhadrappa, had returned their Akademi awards, and five writers stepped down from official positions at the literary body protesting against its “silence” over “rising intolerance”.
Several Opposition parties, including the Congress, had dubbed as “perverse and cynical” Union finance minister Arun Jaitley’s dismissal of their protest as a “manufactured paper rebellion” against the govern- ment. The BJP, for its part, targeted the Congress, saying those returning awards in the wake of the Dadri lynching incident and attacks on rationalists are doing a new kind of politics after their “patrons” lost and seemed “Congress- sponsored” as they stood in support of that party.
“A writer, dramatist is killed. A free thinker is killed. Why? Because he has different views. A rationalist is killed by superstitious people and the Akademi has done nothing. Why is it scared? It is an autonomous body where even the president is elected by writers. We are all writers. Why are we so scared,” Daruwalla said while participating in a silent solidarity march. Hariharan said, “To say that the writer in me is dead is the saddest comment one can make in our society.”