Author Shashi Deshpande quits Akademi post
She was awarded the Padma Shri in 2009
Bengaluru: Award-winning author Shashi Deshpande on Friday resigned from the Sahitya Akademi general council expressing “a sense of strong disappointment” over the literary body’s silence on the killing of Kannada writer M.M. Kalburgi.
In her letter to Akademi chairperson Vishwanath Prasad Tiwari, the 77-year-old author said, “I do this with regret, and with the hope that the Akademi will go beyond organising programmes, and giving prizes, to being involved with crucial issues that affect Indian writers’ freedom to speak and write.”
Ms Deshpande, author of several novels, short stories and essay collections and books for children, won the Sahitya Akademi award for her novel “That Long Silence” in 1990. She was awarded the Padma Shri in 2009.
Her action comes in the wake of a parade of litterateurs renouncing their coveted prizes.
Earlier this week, celebrated writer Nayantara Sahgal and Hindi poet Ashok Vajpeyi had returned their Sahitya Akademi awards in protest against the “assault on right to freedom of both life and expression”.
Hindi writer Uday Prakash was the first to return his Sahitya Akademi award to protest the murder of Kalburgi.