By returning awards, we are forcing everyone to think
The irony is that I received the Sahitya Akademi award in 2009 for my play Tati Tavi Da Sach (The Hot Plate’s Truth), which is my ode to multiculturalism and tolerance, ideals which seem to have suddenly become a distant mirage in contemporary India. I had no choice but to return the award.
The present government, through its silence and measured responses, seems to be suggesting that we have no choice but to reconcile to the killing of rationalists and lynching of a man just because he was suspected of consuming beef. What has got into them? Does power do that? And then they talk about development? Is it only supposed to mean FDI or other fancy terms devised by top PR professionals on the BJP payrolls?
On the one hand, the state talks about making India a superpower, on the other, people are killed for what they eat and women told what they should wear. Should these be concerns of a government when the country’s farmers are committing suicides, women are scared to venture out, people do not have enough to eat, government hospitals need medicines and corruption rules? This is not the India I know. I am better off in another country.
I always thought that the BJP had learnt lessons from Gujarat. But they seem to have learnt all the wrong things. What saddens me is that they assume that every Hindu is a fundamentalist and will support them for what they are unleashing in the country. Are they trying to take us back to the medieval times? Hinduism has always been a great hope for this country, a way of life which has so much elasticity that it celebrates the richness in contradiction and embraces varied contrasts. Of course, this is not the first time that parochial ideologies and the narrowness of certain groups have come out to challenge the pluralistic fibre of this country, but never before has any government justified violence against minorities and the intellectuals whose ideas are not in tune with them by maintaining a deafening silence.
Nationalism makes sense only till a certain point. When you start assuming that only your ideas matter and voices of dissent should be crushed, that is the time when your hollowness gets completely exposed.
What to say about the attitude of the Sahitya Akademi, especially its chairperson, Dr Vishwanath Prasad Tiwari. It has pained me no end. Does the Chairperson of the academy of letters need to take permission of his organisation to openly come out and aggressively condemn such incidents? It is stunning to see that the Akademi is content with a mere customary condolence resolution. Actually it is more hurting because a chairperson is nominated because of his writings; he should remain a writer first. I am surprised that he has chosen to act only as Chairperson and not as an author; which actually is the basis of his position.
He thinks that writers are politicising the issue by returning their awards. Well, I am not sure, but it could be true in some cases. But if he is politicising the situation by keeping quiet, they are doing so at least by their deeds.
The chairman has also asked the writers how they will pay back the goodwill earned by them because their works have been translated into other languages and have been published by the Akademi. Well, all I can say that the Akademi should immediately stop publishing my awarded book into any other language and let me know how I can return the favour of translating my play into Hindi. Also, I would not like to accept any royalty on the sale of my book.
Many people on social media and television studios have been asking if returning the awards will serve any purpose. What they do not understand is that the purpose has already been served. People who do not even read are now paying attention to the fact that writers from across the country are returning major awards to protest against the well-orchestrated plan to disrupt communal peace. We are forcing everyone to think. We are making people understand that it is not fair to stifle voices of dissent and that opposing viewpoints need to be countered with ideas and not bullets.
Shiv Sena did not let Ghulam Ali sing. Will they ever understand that Ali is not a Pakistani for me? And that Bulle Shah or Faiz Ahmed Faiz and I have a cultural bond that can never be smeared by ink?
We all need to remember that be it the killing of rationalists, Dadri lynching or ink thrown at writer Sudheendra Kulkarni on October 12 by Shiv Sainiks in Mumbai, none of them are small or isolated incidents. They are merely a warning.
(As told to Sukant Deepak.)