Some eminent writers are selective sight-seers
In recent weeks, more than a dozen writers and public intellectuals have either returned their Sahitya Akademi awards or resigned from their positions at the prestigious council to oppose what they see as the emergence of an increasing intolerance in sections of our society and a supposedly indifferent state. Two recent events have served as catalysts to their protest movement: First, the murder of scholar and Sahitya Akademi award winner MM Kalburgi in Karnataka on August 30, which came on the heels of Marathi author and CPI leader Govind Pansare's murder in February, and the killing of anti-superstition activist Narendra Dabholkar in 2013.
The second was the mob-lynching of a Muslim following rumours that he kept beef at his home in Dadri, Uttar Pradesh, on September 28. While each of the thinkers is well within his or her rights to express opposition in any which they want, as long as it's within the purview of the law, surely they realise that they have ended up tarnishing the name of the Akademi in the process. Even if we assume (difficult though it is to make such as sweeping remarks) that these intellectuals are correct, and that India is indeed facing a wave of intolerance and communal violence, there is nothing that the Akademi could have possibly done about one murder in Karnataka and another in Uttar Pradesh.
The Akademi had given the awards or inducted officials on the basis of talent and merit, and those factors stand undiminished. How then does returning the awards or resigning from the Akademi serve any purposeIJ Apart from the fact that it catches some eyeballs on television and grabs some space in the Op-ed sections of newspapers, such actions have in fact only put the Akademi under the spotlight, with many now pointing fingers at the institution for being a Soviet relic to perpetuate state patronage. This argument may not be entirely unfounded. Still, the Akademi hardly deserves the kind of ridicule that it has faced in recent weeks.
What has made matters worse is the hypocrisy of many of the eminent protesters, who have chosen to highlight certain issues while conveniently glossing over others. For example, as many commentators have already pointed out, Ms Nayantara Sahgal, arguably the most high-profile of the protesters due to her lineage, was so moved by the unconscionable killing of one man in Dadri that she returned her award to a Government that didn't give it to her in the first place. Yet, she had no qualms in accepting the award in 1986 from the same Government that had overseen the anti-Sikh pogrom of 1984.
Years later, when Kashmiri Pandits were driven out of the valley and made refugees in their own country, there was hardly a pipsqueak of protest from the likes of Ms Sahgal. This is not to say that she and others from the literary fraternity have no business speaking up now, but only that when one compares the list of incidents that they have opposed to the ones they have ignored, it is difficult to overlook the political overtones that emerge. What could have been a genuine call for course- correction from the nation's most respected thought leaders has now turned into an ideological brawl between the agitators and those who view them as being intellectual opportunists at best.