And on Tuesday Punjabi writer Dalip Kaur Tiwana gave up her Padma Shri, the fourth highest civilian honour in India.
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Hindi writers Mangalesh Dabral and Rajesh Joshi along with Srinath today said they will return their prestigious Sahitya Akademi awards while Waryam Sandhu and G N Ranganatha Rao intimated the Akademi of their decision.
In an interview with the newspaper Indian Express, Sahgal said there is now “an attempt to blow up the idea of India and to put in its place a kind of travesty of Hinduism, a kind of monoculture, which has nothing to do with Hinduism”. However, I am not aware of the process on how to return the award to the Akademi. He was awarded the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1978 in Assamese language for his novel “Pita Putra” (Father Son).
In a letter today to Sahitya Akademi chairperson Vishwanath Prasad Tiwari, she said that if incidents occur which go against India’s national spirit, then people are within their rights to register their protest over these.
The anger among writers has been building for a while now.
Worth mentioning here, Kashmir’s celebrated short story writer, Akhtar Mohiuddin was first to return his Sahitya Akademi award in 1984 in protest to Muhammad Maqbool Bhat’s hanging in Delhi’s Tihar jail.
The poet and playwright said it was unprecedented to have so many writers return their awards. A writer can’t keep quiet. “I am disturbed at the Dadri killing and the killing of rationalists”, Sahgal told IANS, adding that she was upset over Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s silence on the issue. “In that case, they would have killed Bhagat Singh, too, who did not believe in God, and Savarkar, who used to say that there is no need to worship cows”, he said. “Our democracy is in grave danger; the very fabric of democracy is under threat”.
AMK President, Syed Shujaat Bukhari had said that the writers who returned their awards in protest against the increasing communalization and criminalization in India must be supported by one and all. The Kannada writer and Dalit poet Aravind Malagatti resigned, believing that the Akademi should have spoken out condemning the murders of Kalburgi and the rationalist Pansare. “For those who protested against Ghulam Ali’s concert in Mumbai and Pune should know that he is not just a singer from Pakistan but a world-reknowned artist”.
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In Modi’s home state of Gujarat, poet writer Anil Joshi joined another Vadodara-based writer Ganesh Devy, in returning his award.
