After Mahesh Sharma, his Cabinet colleague Ravi Shankar Prasad on Wednesday questioned eminent writers’ act of returning awards to protest against Kannada author Kalburgi’s murder and Dadri lynching reminding them that such voices were “not heard” after incidents like Emergency and Muzaffarnagar riots.
His statement came on a day when a section of writers from Assam Sahitya Sabha resented their fellow writers’ action of returning Sahitya Akademi awards and expressed concern over “needless politicisation” of the autonomous institution.
The Sabha noted that instead of using Sahitya Akademi as a medium of protest, the authors should have found some other way to express their protest. Sabha President Dr Dhrubajyoti Bora said, “We uphold the right of writers to protest, but we also strongly feel that Sahitya Akademi, an autonomous national institution of authors, that is internationally reputed, should not be needlessly politicised as it can cause great harm to its autonomy and interests of Indian authors.”
The Information and Broadcasting Minister while talking to reporters at Cabinet briefing said “...One thing does pain me sometimes. A number of big incidents happened in the country earlier, also but at that time people did not return (awards).
“During Emergency, democratic rights including press freedom were violated on such a large scale. But these kinds of voices were not heard then. Such a massive riot happened in Muzaffarangar one and half years back and the way the (state) government (of Samajwadi Party) worked there was in an enitrely discriminatory manner. At that time also such protest was not seen.”
Meanwhile, noted Bengali poet Mandakranta Sen has decided to return her Sahitya Akademi’s Young Writers’ Award to protest against communal attacks in the country.
“This is my mark of protest against what happened in Dadri and the attacks on writers and rationalists in other parts of the country,” Sen, who was given the Swarnajayanti Special Sahitya Akademi Young Writers award in 2004, said.