Akademi president Dr Vishwanath Prasad Tiwari had told Mirror earlier he will follow the board’s advice on whether the institution should speak out against Kalburgi’s murder.
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Khyal, who has chose to return his Sahitya Akademi Award, talked to iamin over phone and said, “Since the new government came to power a year ago, a chain of events have happened where Muslim community has been targetted”.
It asserted its commitment to the “core secular values” enshrined in the Constitution and the “right to life of all”.
Bhullar said he was perturbed by the attempts to “disrupt the social fabric of the country”. “The sad thing is that while he was away a man was beaten to death because he ate beef”, Joseph said, referring to the Dadri lynching.
“Till date, 32 Konkani writers have received the Sahitya Akademi award since its inception”.
Punjabi author Waryam Sandhu and Kannada translator G N Ranganatha Rao said they have intimated to the Akademi their decision to give back their awards. It has been suggested that returning their awards is tantamount to a disavowal of the Union of India rather than a condemnation of the government of the day.
But Mr Aulakh condemned the attacks on “progressive writers, leaders of the rational movement and the forcible saffronisation of education and culture”; Mr Khayal returned his award in protest against the growing hatred of minorities in India.
“It is high time that writers take a stand”, said Hindi poet Ashok Vajpeyi, 74.
Nayantara Sahgal: Noted writer and the niece of former prime minister, Nayantara Sahgal also returned the prestigious Sahitya Akademi Award in protest against what she called the “vanishing space” for diversity.
Other writers resigned from the governing council of the academy. “They feel their future is bleak”.
The Indian-born writer was talking about writer Nayantara Sahgal’s decision last week to return her award to express her solidarity with “all Indians who uphold the right to dissent”. Novelist and columnist Khushwant Singh had returned his Padma Award after the Operation Blue Star. Kashmiri writer Ghulam Nabi Khayal, Gujarati poet Anil Joshi, Kannada writer Rahamath Tarikere and five writers from Punjab – Surjit Patar, Chaman Lal, Baldev Singh Sadaknama, Jaswinder and Darshan Buttar – joined the symbolic protest this week by returning their awards.
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A few writers, like the Malayalam author M T Vasudevan Nair and the English-language poets Adil Jussawalla and Keki N Daruwalla, have chosen other methods of protest, writing to the Akademi to express their disappointment.
