Nayantara Sahgal to return her Sahitya Akademi Award

Nayantara Sahgal, author and niece of Jawaharlal Nehru, has decided to return the Sahitya Akademi Award she received in 1986. She has said that it is in protest against the "failure of the state to safeguard Indian cultural diversity"

Here is the full text of her statement as was published on the website indianculturalforum.in

The Unmaking of India

In a recent lecture, India’s Vice-President, Dr. Hamid Ansari, found it necessary to remind us that India’s Constitution promises all Indians “liberty of thought, expression, belief, faith and worship.”The right to dissent is an integral part of this Constitutional guarantee. He found it necessary to do so because India’s culture of diversity and debate is now under vicious assault. Rationalists who question superstition, anyone who questions any aspect of the ugly and dangerous distortion of Hinduism known as Hindutva – whether in the intellectual or artistic sphere, or whether in terms of food habits and lifestyle – are being marginalized, persecuted, or murdered. A distinguished Kannada writer and Sahitya Akademi Award winner, M.M. Kalburgi, and two Maharashtrians, Narendra Dhabolkar and Govind Pansare, both anti-superstition activists, have all been killed by gun-toting motor-cyclists. Other dissenters have been warned they are next in line. Most recently, a village blacksmith, Mohammed Akhtaq, was dragged out of his home in Bisara village outside Delhi, and brutally lynched, on the supposed suspicion that beef was cooked in his home.

In all these cases, justice drags its feet. The Prime Minister remains silent about this reign of terror. We must assume he dare not alienate evil-doers who support his ideology. It is a matter of sorrow that the Sahitya Akademi remains silent. The Akademis were set up as guardians of the creative imagination, and promoters of its finest products in art and literature, music and theatre. In protest against Kalburgi’s murder, a Hindi writer, Uday Prakash, has returned his Sahitya Akademi Award. Six Kannada writers have returned their Awards to the Kannada Sahitya Parishat.

In memory of the Indians who have been murdered, in support of all Indians who uphold the right to dissent, and of all dissenters who now live in fear and uncertainty, I am returning my Sahitya Akademi Award.

Signed: Nayantara Sahgal, Dehra Dun, October 6, 1915

http://www.thehindu.com/news/nayant...kademi-award/article7730676.ece?homepage=true


RSS apologist would love the news as they probably feel she should not have been given the award in the fist place.:eyebrows:

Ms. Sahgal said she was concerned at the environment in the country and it seemed to be getting “worse and worse” in the past 15 months. “I guess the death of this poor man in Dadri [Mohammad Akhlaq] was the final…the last straw,” she said.
She criticised the government’s inaction and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s silence. “In all these cases, justice drags its feet. The Prime Minister remains silent on this reign of terror. We must assume he dare not alienate evil-doers who support his ideology,” she said in a written statement.
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.”
Ms. Sahgal was a member of the Sahitya Akademi’s Advisory Board for English but she resigned during the Emergency.
She also famously criticised her cousin, Indira Gandhi, for actions during the Emergency in 1975.
http://www.thehindu.com/news/nation...kademi-award/article7730676.ece?homepage=true

Nayantara Sahgal, a working writer at 88, has reminded India that the craft of writing involves a commitment to truth. Dissent becomes a way of life for a writer. There is a politics to dissent that most people do not understand. Dissent is an act of courage, of standing up against a tide, confronting a ‘bully-boy’ majority. Dissent is an act of aloneness, of facing up to crowd when a single voice can puncture silence.

tactics are interesting. Some call it “selective outrage”. Such dismissals imply that you have to be a professional protester, without an understanding that even in the field of injustice you have to pick and choose what you fight for. Many feel she was a beneficiary of the Nehru era. She was but, unlike many of those belonging to the Nehruvian generation, she has achievements to her own name. She brought an aesthetics and courage to her own life which deserves its own reading. Ms. Sahgal’s protest is not an outburst. It is a reasoned act of dissent and, yes, a cry of grief uttered in pain for something she feels deeply about. She insisted that fellow writers and academics cannot be shot to death. This protest comes when silence has become the only accepted form of political correctness in the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
Stance during Emergency
However, in the past, Ms. Sahgal has chosen to speak out at many such moments. Her protest during the Emergency made her legendary. Ms. Sahgal, along with Arun Shourie, Kuldip Nayar, George Fernandes and Rajni Kothari, created a normative framework for protests. One has to, in the same spirit, look at the care with which she has crafted her protest letter now.
She begins by citing Hamid Ansari’s letter about the guarantees in the Constitution. The ‘right to dissent’ is part of the ‘right to life’ for a writer. The life of an intellectual is not just a life of ideas but a normative frame of values and an idea of what a decent society is. Ms. Sahgal is right. India’s culture and diversity are being emasculated and distorted.

Ms. Sahgal understands both the commitment and creativity of a writer’s politics. She is not merely saying that she is not spoilt by privilege. That is too banal. One can understand that even elites realise the preciousness of democracy as much as any vulnerable citizen. In her collection of essays The Political Imagination, Ms. Sahgal writes that a political stand is unavoidable. Even in the life of the most reclusive of artists, there comes a time when one must take a stand. She observes that, “When artistic freedom is forbidden, the compulsions of life and literature become the same.” Nayantara Sahgal has recognised this covenant with truth as part of the craft of writing.
In fact, in an almost obvious act of continuity, she is echoing what U.R. Ananthamurthy wrote about a few weeks before he died. He wrote, in a hurried and poetic book, that he would not like to live in an Modi-sque India. In a few hundred pages — which could be considered an amalgam of a manifesto, a pamphlet and reflections — he traced the brutalisation of the nation state project from Savarkar to Modi. It was a powerful indictment written in Kannada and is yet to be translated into English.
Mr. Modi’s follower, Giriraj Singh, immediately exclaimed that those who did not want to stay in Mr. Modi’s India should take the train to Pakistan. The crude intolerance was obvious and today, it is clear that one is enacting that same encounter in a thousand similar variants. Ms. Sahgal is stating what is politically obvious. India has reached a state where one can no longer take India’s democracy, its cultural pluralism, and its secularism for granted. At such moments, the silence of a writer would be unforgivable.


http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lea...fied-dissent/article7750250.ece?homepage=true

i think she kept the money, the house and other perks that went along with the prize. just the medal alone went back . i would have been more impressed if she returned the whole booty. being a nehru kin, she was well off in her own way, and did not need this money.

Many feel she was a beneficiary of the Nehru era. She was but, unlike many of those belonging to the Nehruvian generation, she has achievements to her own name. She brought an aesthetics and courage to her own life which deserves its own reading. Ms. Sahgal’s protest is not an outburst. It is a reasoned act of dissent and, yes, a cry of grief uttered in pain for something she feels deeply about. She insisted that fellow writers and academics cannot be shot to death. This protest comes when silence has become the only accepted form of political correctness in the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

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"A reasoned act of dissent and a cry of grief uttered in pain for something she feels deeply about." Okay. But the sensitivity to such events appears to be selective. When the sikhs were massacred in Delhi after the assassination of Indira Rajiv Gandhi said infamously about the big tree falling and its effects on the ground. That was a horrible event and that did not cause pain in this intellectual's mind and she did not think it necessary to express it immediately. Perhaps because she was agreeing with Rajiv Gandhi that the earth shakes and people die when the big tree falls. Very poetic indeed.

And when the pundits in kashmir were massacred, driven away from home, raped, maimed and became refugees overnight in their own country, this intellectual did not feel any pain and there was no cry of grief from her. Remember she herself is from Kashmir and knew what was happening there from friends and relatives.

When a fellow writer Taslima from Bangladesh was hounded out in India, this intellectual did not utter a word.

And moradabad riots did not move this intellectual to surrender her award because the Government was that of the Family.

The fact is:

undeserving people have been rewarded with padma awards, Sahitya academy awards and plum posts during the rule of the dynasty. They had always been politicians and they could not help being that when there was an opportunity to gain some limelight. The temptation was too strong to resist.

It is pure politics and hypocracy of the pure variety.

Her latest 'muththu' in TV. What is the use of smart cities and villages for dumb and ignorant population.
Endorsed by her supporters here and elsewhere!

By returning the awards what are they trying to prove ? I can understand that if the awards were given by the present BJP Government or the past BJP Government there is some form of effect in giving back the awards but returning back the Congress Awards is an insult to the Congress than to the BJP .

Returning Akademi award is a ‘publicity stunt’

There is no provision to take back the award, says writer and former IPS officer G. Thilagavathy.

Rejecting the idea of returning her Sahitya Akademi award, writer and former IPS officer G. Thilagavathy said the Akademi could only confer awards and had no provision to take it back from writers.

Ms. Thilagavathy described as a “publicity stunt” the action of some writers who had returned their award to express their protest against the killing of Kannada writer M.M. Kalburgi.

“Sahitya Akademi is not a government organisation. The awardees are selected by erudite scholars and writers. Returning the award is not the way to express one’s displeasure with the government,” said Ms. Thilagavathy, who was also a member of the Akademi.

Read more at: http://www.thehindu.com/news/nation...award-is-a-publicity-stunt/article7759103.ece

Kushwant singh resigned from the academy when the lady writer he had complained about for lobbying got the award. To add insult to injury she announced that her husband will get it next year. One 'outlook' article bares all.

Sahitya Akademi President: 'Why are writers returning awards?'

'If they oppose the government on different issues, what has the Sahitya Akademi got to do with it?'

'I say you cannot return the Sahitya Akademi Award on this issue. This is no way to protest.'

'These awards were given by writers. So what is the point of returning these awards to the government?'

The Sahitya Akademi president speaks out.

Dr Vishwanath Prasad Tiwari, president of the Sahitya Akademi, is troubled.

Nearly 20 writers have returned their Sahitya Akademi Awards to the government in protest against the killing of writers like Professor M M Kalburgi, left, charging Prime Minister Narendra Modi with keeping silent even as there is growing intolerance in the country towards views different from those of the ruling regime.

Dr Tiwari below, below, left, tells Syed Firdaus Ashraf/Rediff.com why the writers must not return their awards to the government.

You said the Sahitya Akademi Awards were given by the Sahitya Akademi to writers and not by the government. So why are these writers returning their awards to the government?

I told them that they must not return the Sahitya Akademi Award. I said if they oppose the government on different issues, what has the Sahitya Akademi as an organisation got to do with it?

Read more at: http://www.rediff.com/news/intervie...why-are-writers-returning-awards/20151013.htm