Eminent Telugu writers and editors of leading dailies regretted the high decibel drama being staged by some writers by returning the Sahitya Akademi awards. They termed it a staged literary revolt, a cheap gimmickry bordering on a publicity stunt. They demanded that the Sahitya Akademi should gladly accept the awards returned to it and send notices to the awardees to return the award money also with interest. Clean up the mess once for all and formulate guidelines in future that only deserving people are awarded, they opined.
Former Chief Justice of Patna High Court Justice Narsimha Reddy said, “Nation does not lose anything by the sheer intimidation of these writers. I recall as a Judge during my tenure as Chief Justice in one of the cases, an estimated 30,000 teachers were believed to have availed jobs as teachers in Bihar secondary schools producing fake qualifying certificates. As a Presiding Judge I asked teachers to disclose voluntarily, if the certificates were fake, court will not take any action if they surrender their jobs immediately. Around 2000 teachers resigned on their own fearing punishment. It is an open secret that lobbying goes on for getting awards because it enhances one’s respectability and credibility and how many among these truthfully claim to have obtained on merit? Thus the competency, intellectual honesty and integrity of these awardees are doubtful.”
Dr Mudigonda Sivaprasad, who recently translated a book with commentaries on Integral Humanism in Telugu, said Sarah Joseph, the Malayalam writer, willingly accepted the award from the BJP Government in 2003 barely a few months after the Godhra riots. Equally, Nayantara Sahgal threw up a shocking picture of opportunistic inconsistency and intellectual dishonesty. Joint convener of Jatiya Sahitya Parishad Dr Sunita Rammohan Reddy said an award is not a consumer item to be returned. We need to have the courage and intellectual honesty to rise above our prejudices and condemn every killing or atrocity regardless of the religion of the victim or his/her ideology.
Prajna Bharati president Dr TH Chowdury said the Sahitya Akademi is actually an independent institution, and the concerns these people have are the political ones. He regretted the fact that a section of writers has returned the Akademi awards and needless to say an Award is a recognition of intellectual, literary, creative or academic merits. It is a political act and those awarded were politically active at Academy itself during the last decade.
Presiding over the discussion Shri Akkiraju Ramapathi Rao demanded that the Academy itself should be abolished. This is an official institution which gives awards to authors who are writing what the ruling party wants, whoever is the ruling party. The sensible thing to do is let the private publishers give an award and sell the books. If an author is good he will sell. No point in protecting authors who do art for art sake and no one reads them.
Shri N Ramchandra Rao, MLC, said it ‘selective outrage’. He asked why did they not surrender the awards after 84 Sikh riots followed by Muzaffarnagar and many more during UPA-I and II. During the Emergency also the role of these writers was despicable.
BJP spokesperson Raghunandan Rao said law and order is the state subject. By that corollary it is the Congress Government in Karnataka and the Samajwadi Party in UP which stand culpable for the Kalburgi murder and the Dadri lynching respectively and not the BJP Government at the Centre. Should the Centre invoke Article 356 and dismiss these governments? Why are these awardees not demanding dismissal of governments that are culpable? BJP leader Sudeesh Rambotla called the writers a literary and cultural mafia and said they are staging a literary revolt.
N Nagaraja Rao
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