The Sahitya Akademi was created in 1954 as India's national insitute for letters. Every year it gives 25 awards, one each for a literary work in India's 22 recognized languages (Assamese, Bengali, Bodo, Dogri, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Kashmiri, Konkani, Maithili, Malayalam, Manipuri, Marathi, Nepali, Odia, Punjabi, Santhali, Sanskrit, Sindhi, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu), two others for English and Rajasthani and one for a work in any of the many other languages spoken in India. It also assigns awards for translation and each work that receives the Sahitya Akademi award is generally translated into many other languages.
Over the past two weeks, at least 35 writers have returned their awards and joined marches to protest targeted assassinations of liberal writers/activists. Some writers believe the government's supposed indifference towards rising intolerance is fueling the murders. They returned their awards partly because the Akademi refrained from strong condemnation of the murders, many believe this was to avoid upsetting the government. The perpetrators are widely believed to come from various extremist groups on the right who tacitly or openly support the ruling BJP party.
I wrote a diary about these incidents a couple of weeks ago: Man suspected of eating beef is killed by lynch mob in India, but there's a bigger story here.
More about the protests and some personal history below the orange plaque:
It started on October 7, when Nayantara Sahgal returned the Sahitya Akademi's award for her novel "Rich Like Us". In an interview with The Hindu she explained that this was to protest what she called the "vanishing space" for diversity and people being "killed for not agreeing with the ruling ideology."
Referring to the recent killings of rationalists and writers M.M. Kalburgi, Narendra Dabholkar and Govind Pansare and of Dadri resident Mohammad Akhlaq, who was lynched on suspicion of consuming beef, Ms. Sahgal, speaking to The Hindu from her home in Dehradun, said: “…in this rising tide of hatred, India is being unmade, being destroyed.”
Since Sahgal is Nehru's niece, this quickly got personal and very political. She is the daughter of Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, Jawaharlal Nehru's sister and an important Indian political figure in her own right. Pandit was the Indian ambassador to several countries and the UN among other positions. The ruling right-wing BJP party is being accused of running a campaign to
diminish Nehru's legacy in favor of
Sardar Vallabhai Patel and
Shubhas Chandra Bose. Bose famously attempted an armed invasion of India to battle British colonial rule; he is enormously controversial since the attempt was undertaken
alongside the Axis powers during World War II. Narendra Modi has
announced plans to construct a statue of Patel off the coast of Gujarat which would be twice the size of the Statue of Liberty. Patel was Gujarati, as is Modi, so there are accusations of regional jingoism alongside
complaints about the $350 million price tag. The statue will be built mostly from
pieces made in China, which is somewhat ironic since a cornerstone of Mr. Modi's policies is his
Make in India campaign to boost manufacturing in the country.
Allegations are thick as flies, including of malicious edits to Nehru's Wikipedia entry. Strangely, this effort involves capitalizing on the internal displacement of (Hindu) Kashmiri Pandits, tens (possibly hundreds) of thousands of whom fled Kashmir under threats from (Muslim) Kashmiri separatists, widely believed to be supported by Pakistan. It is strange because the Nehrus are themselves Kashimir Pandits and the Indian government has run a pretty brutal counter-insurgency campaign in Kashmir under successive Congress governments. No one is certain this has made matters any better, but the violence is at an ebb in recent years.
The BJP's supporters took to social media to question why Sahgal accepted the award in 1986, two years after pogroms in Delhi and elsewhere led to the murders of thousands of Sikhs.
Those pogrom is one of the first political issues I recall. My father was born into a Sikh family, but he has not worn a turban since his 20s. My grandmother was always displeased by his choice and wanted me to wear a turban. She changed her mind when she heard stories of young turbaned boys being killed in Delhi by mobs after Indira Gandhi was assassinated by her Sikh bodyguards.
As part of a counter-insurgency campaign, Indira Gandhi had ordered troops to storm the most important Sikh gurudwara, Harmandir Sahib in Amritsar (commonly called the Golden Temple). Operation Blue Star resulted in 500 deaths and caused extensive damage to the complex. The Indian Army's forces were commanded by the Sikh general, Kuldip Singh Brar. Numerous Sikh soldiers resigned from the armed forces in protest.
I recall discussion in my family about whether we should continue wearing the kara or steel bangle that most Punjabi and all Sikh men wear. In retrospect it is odd because the turban, unshorn hair and the kara were specifically intended to distinguish Sikhs and signal an absence of fear of persecution. Notoriously, Indira Gandhi's son, Rajiv Gandhi said about the riots "When a big tree falls, the earth shakes". There were numerous incidents of incitement and members of his political party are suspected and some were convicted of committing murders during the rioting.
This wasn't Sahgal's first time at the rodeo either. She had previously resigned from her advisory role at the Sahitya Akademi in response to her cousin Indira's suspension of various constitutional rights during the Emergency. She also spoke out forcefully and controversially at the time and Indira cancelled her scheduled appointment as ambassador to Italy in retaliation. She is the real deal, as was her mother who was rather critical of Indira Gandhi tenure from very early on. Interestingly, Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit also criticized her nephew Rajiv Gandhi and the Congress party for paying lip service to Nehru's legacy.
Denying that her decision stems from her political beliefs, Ms. Sahgal said: “I am not against any political party. India is a democracy, and in democracies every party has a right to be in power, but what we are seeing in India today is fascism. There is a vanishing space for diversity to the extent people are being killed for not agreeing with the ruling ideology.”
Undermining claims of selective outrage,
Punjabi and Sikh writers began returning their awards. They quickly became the largest linguistic/regional group to do so and a number said they were returning their awards partly to
protest the attacks on Sahgal. Among them were the dramatist Ajmer Singh Aulakh and the short story writer Gurbachan Bhullar.
The Hindi poet Ashok Vajpeyi issued a statement when he returned his award:
We are now four writers, from three pan-Indian languages i.e. Hindi, Urdu and English, belonging to four generations, who have returned our Sahitya Akademi Award in protest. We are not alone: there are many in most languages and other artistic and intellectual vocations and locations who are feeling equally agitated, angry and anxious. None of us belong to any political party though we have views on politics. But we are extremely worried at the way the India polity is moving. All spaces of liberal values and thought, all locations of dissent and dialogue, all attempts at sanity and mutual trust are under assault almost on a daily basis. All kinds and forms of violence, whether religious and communal, consumerist and globalising, caste-based and cultural, social and domestic, are on the upswing. An ethos of bans, suspicions, hurt feelings is being promoted by many forces that are active and have been emboldened by powers that be, without the slightest fear of law. Democratic rights of expression, faith, privacy etc are being looked down upon and curbed or disrupted without provocation or fault.
Many others followed, including Shashi Deshpande, who returned her award and resigned from the Akademi's general council,
writing:
Today, I am deeply distressed by the silence of the Akademi on the murder of Professor M. M. Kalburgi. Professor Kalburgi was a noted scholar, and a good and honest human being; he was also a Sahitya Akademi awardee and a member of its General Council until recently.
If the Akademi, the premier literary organisation in the country, cannot stand up against such an act of violence against a writer, if the Akademi remains silent about this attack on one of its own, what hope do we have of fighting the growing intolerance in our country? A few tame condolence meetings here and there for a member of our community cannot serve the purpose.
Possibly the strongest protest was the
resignation of Malayalam poet K. Satchidanandan after the Akademi refused his request to issue a condemnation of the murders. He served in various capacities within the Akademi for decades and wrote:
I am sorry to observe that the Akademi has failed in its duty to stand with the writers and to uphold the freedom of expression guaranteed by the Constitution of India that seems to be getting violated every day in the country. Holding a ritual condolence meeting in a regional office, as the Akademi seems to have done, is hardly an adequate response to the recent attacks on the freedom of expression followed by a series of murders of independent thinkers in different parts of the country. I am sorry to find that you think this is a political issue while to writers like me it is an issue of our basic freedom to live , think and write. Annihilation should never be allowed to replace argument that is the very essence of democracy.
In the midst of all this, the Bihari politician
Lalu Prasad Yadav initiated an epic take-down of Prime Minister Narendra Modi
by calling him a present-day "Dhritarashtra". in the epic
Mahabharata, Dhritarashtra is a major figure, an ineffectual blind king, whose love for his sons prevents him from recognizing and acting against injustices they perpetrate.
The widespread criticism of the murders and intimidationis said to have led to a break between the BJP and it's parent organization, the RSS. Mr. Yadav and his allies have made political hay of the RSS's advocacy for removing the elaborate system of quotas India has for government jobs and seats in colleges among other things. This system is meant to redress India's significant caste driven disparities, though it's efficacy is often questioned. What is not questioned is the political significance of the quotas for voters from the "lower" castes, who Mr. Yadav represents. Though the multi-stage Bihar election is not over, it does appear as if Mr. Modi's party will not win a decisive victory as previously anticipated.
The former Culture Minister wrote a public letter to the PM on the history of the institution (which Nehru headed when it was founded). He urged Modi to act immediately to curb reactionary elements.
Earlier today, the Sahitya Akademi held an emergency meeting:
Strongly condemning the killing of writer M.M. Kalburgi, the Sahitya Akademi on Friday passed a unanimous resolution appealing to State and Central governments to take steps to prevent such incidents and asked authors to take back the awards they had returned to protest against “rising intolerance”.
Chalk one small victory up to the power of protest.