Akademi protest turns into writers’ exodus
CHANDIGARH/ VADODARA/ BENGALURU: In protest against the government’s inaction over the killing of rationalists, three writers from Punjab and one from Gujarat on Sunday announced to return their Sahitya Akademi Awards.
Punjabi playwrights Ajmer Aulakh and Atamjit, and Toronto-based Waryam Sandhu announced decision to return their Akademi awards on Sunday. Another Delhi-based Punjabi writer Gurbachan Bhullar had on Saturday announced return of the Sahitya Akademi Award given to him in 2005. Aulakh was given National Sahitya Akademi award in 2006 and Atamjit received the award in 2007.
They have responded to a call given by Association for Democratic Rights, Punjab (AFDR), subsequent to the murder of decorated writers MM Kalburgi in Karnataka and Narendra Dabholkar in August 2013.
Mansa-based Aulakh said that his grudge was against the central government as well as the state government. “The art is under threat and I have decided to return the award in these dark times,” he said.
Bhullar said in the recent past, the attempts are being made to disrupt the social fabric of the country. “Targeting people from the field of literature and culture in an orchestrated manner, has been perturbing me,” he said.
Atamjit, often remembered for his play on Manto’s short story Tobha Tek Singh, said: “People with democratic thinking have been killed and our government had shown no concern to catch their murderers.”
In Vadodara, writer Ganesh Devy returned his Sahitya Akademi Award to express solidarity with the writers, who have recently given up their awards to condemn the “shrinking space for free expression and growing intolerance towards differences of opinion” in the country.
“It is high time that writers take a stand,” Devy said in a letter addressed to the president of Sahitya Akademi Prof Viswanath Pratap Tiwari.