New Delhi, Oct 6: Author Nayantara Sahgal announced today that she would return her Sahitya Akademi award in protest against the "undeclared emergency" being imposed by the BJP-led government at the Centre.
Sahgal, India's first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru's niece, told The Telegraph over phone from Dehradun that the silence of the Prime Minister over the Dadri lynching was the last straw.
"This hatred has been rising since last year and every form of dissent is being suppressed. Directors of academic institutions are being replaced by Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) people. The worst has been the murders of writers and rationalists, and most recently that of (Mohammed) Akhlaque in Dadri. Hence, I will return the award. This is my protest," said the 88-year-old author.
Sahgal, the daughter of Nehru's sister and diplomat Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, won the award in 1986 for her novel Rich Like Us.
The author said she would return the award whenever she was able to visit Delhi next.
In a statement announcing her decision, Sahgal wrote: "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."
In December 1975, Sahgal had written pamphlets against Indira Gandhi's Emergency regime, liberally strewn with anti-fascism quotes from Nehru.
Today, she said: "What is happening today is not called an emergency, but it is an emergency for Indian democracy. All dissent is being suppressed to the level of even murder."
Chhattisgarh-based Hindi author Uday Prakash had returned his award last month after the murder of Karnataka-based rationalist and academic M.M. Kalburgi in August. Six Kannada writers have also returned their state-level awards.
Sahitya Akademi president V.P. Tiwari said the decisions of Sahgal and Prakash to return the award and the prize money would be considered by the executive board which meets in December. The prize money at present is Rs 1 lakh but it was not clear what the amount was when Sahgal won the award.
"We are an autonomous body and writers decide whom the awards go to. We are not the government. So, it is not appropriate for anyone to return our award as a form of protest. This is the first time the awards are being returned. The award is given for a particular work, which is then translated by the academy into 24 Indian languages. Can the reputation gained through these translations also be returned?" Tiwari asked.
Sahgal's announcement coincided with a series of protests Delhi has witnessed since Akhlaque was lynched following unsubstantiated claims of cow slaughter and the consumption of the meat.
Jantar Mantar Road, the regular protest point, and Rajghat, where Mahatma Gandhi's memorial is located, have seen several protests since October 2.
Some groups and parties have also sent fact-finding teams to Bisara village in Dadri, on the outskirts of Delhi, where the murder took place.
A team from Jawaharlal Nehru University and Delhi University found that several "Hindutva" vigilantes had surfaced in the area in the months preceding the attack and that the priest of the temple from where the mob was incited, who has been let off by the police, has vanished.
"This is an extension of the new genre of low-intensity, high-impact communal violence targeted at richer Muslims. The Hindutva forces have realised that all Muslims can't be done away with. Hence, they have switched to instilling fear in the minds of affluent Muslims to keep the community in their place," JNU teacher Vikas Bajpai, part of the group Janhastakshep, said.
The protests organised by academics, intellectuals, civil rights activists, peasant and Left organisations and minority community fronts almost every day have drawn small but vocal crowds of 200 to 300 people.
On Sunday, a youth trying to consume beef in front of the BJP office was detained by police. A journalist from a news website was also taken into custody and allegedly roughed up at Parliament Street police station here.
