Thinking Allowed: Curbing prize wapasi

What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to account? /
Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?
— Lady Macbeth

The old man — in this case the well-established Indian literary community — did turn out to be a mindspring of fresh blood. It was no longer easy for the likes of Lady Macbeth to believe that they need not fear who knows their evil deeds. There was this clamour for accountability, an increasing public urge to speak up against the powers that squashed our democratic freedoms. There was a rising demand to be left alone and not be killed for our choices of food, thought, faith and lifestyle. In an earlier India, such a demand would seem absurdly irrelevant. Now, following the murder of freethinkers Narendra Dhabolkar, Govind Pansare and M.M. Kalburgi, and the lynching of Mohammad Akhlaq in Dadri by Hindutva goons, it seems crucial.

The protest of Indian writers against our diminishing freedoms has been successful. But it is now essential that writers stopped returning their Sahitya Akademi awards. The point has been made, now it is time to build on this success. Not destroy the only autonomous institution for literature nurtured by the Indian government. The Sahitya Akademi is 61 years old, and like many 61-year-olds, may have health problems. As concerned citizens and lovers of free thought and literature, we need to address its ailments and nurse it back to health, not push it into coma.

For that is exactly what the Lady Macbeths would want. They would love to pluck out that space for free literary activity funded by the government and put a sarkari puppet theatre in place. This government loves taking over organisations and planting some saffron devotee to head them. Even the National Book Trust, sister organisation of the Sahitya Akademi, has been taken over. A few months ago, its chairman and eminent Malayalam writer Sethumadhavan was elbowed out and replaced by Baldev Sharma, former editor of RSS mouthpiece Panchajanya. So there is a real danger of the Sahitya Akademi slipping into a saffron swamp where literary merit becomes irrelevant. If we care for literature and freedom of thought and expression, we must not let that happen.

Which is not to say that I am against the writers who have angrily chucked their awards at the Akademi. That a few elderly and middle aged writers, jointly and severally, have made the government sit up and take notice of the rising discontent in the country is a huge tribute to the ethos of Indian democracy, the very spirit that the current government tries to disregard. It took a while to build up, but when it did, the prize wapasi movement was unstoppable. It was easy to ignore the rebuff when the brilliant Hindi writer Uday Prakash returned his Sahitya Akademi Award. And Kannada writers — however distinguished — returning their state awards in Karnataka didn’t make news outside their state. But when Nayantara Sahgal returned her Akademi Award, and Shashi Deshpande resigned from the general body of the Akademi, it was headline news. They were literary stars, fearless women and wonderful writers who wrote in English, the language of power that reached out across India and beyond. More authors joined the cause and soon it was big news around the world. International support poured in, the media played it up energetically and the country’s finance minister took out time from affairs of state and looming economic crises to rubbish writers.

This was a “manufactured protest” he said, “an ideological intolerance towards the BJP”. In fact, it was “politics by other means”. Right on all counts. Every protest is manufactured — jointly by the protesters and the misdeeds that they protest against. Admittedly, it is also a case of ideological intolerance towards what the BJP (and its siblings like the RSS in their Hindu undivided family) want to do with our constitutional guarantees. Yes, it is a case of ideological opposition to the attempt to smother our democratic freedoms. And it is indeed politics by other means. Culture — especially literature — always was. How else do you think “soft power” works?

Even the mere act of writing is political. Accusing writers of “doing politics” is absurd. That’s what they do anyway. They work with material from a world moulded by social and political pressures, and take a stand. In a free country, even the personal is political, remember? And in a country where the very vocal and twitter-happy Prime Minister makes no comment against atrocious attacks on dalits, Muslims, dissenting writers and liberal thinkers, or on a growing culture of intolerance and fascism, there is reason to worry. But targeting the Sahitya Akademi is not the only way of marking your protest. That is rather elitist anyway, where only those who have got an award can return it. Maybe because of its elitism, it has worked. Now we need to move on.

Because it is essential to have an autonomous body like the Sahitya Akademi that is funded by the government. It furthers the commitment of the Indian state to be fair to our two dozen literary languages. It is committed to seek out and reward good writing in all these languages, to encourage new writers and translators. It has the government network at its disposal, and no private or corporate award can approximate the reach of the government in our land of many voices and many tongues. It would also be difficult for corporate awards to judge all languages at par, they are likely to be prejudiced towards power languages and bigger literary markets. So it is vital that the Sahitya Akademi stays alive and autonomous.

But over the years the Akademi has been losing its worth. An author like V.P. Tiwari may find it difficult to hold his own as president of the organisation that was once headed by Jawaharlal Nehru or S. Radhakrishnan, and more recently by U.R. Ananthamurthy and Sunil Gangopadhyay. Besides, it is teeming with controversies. We should nurse it back to health. Among the other protests that many of us are involved with, there is the letter from Bengal’s writers (including several Akademi winners) and intellectuals to the president, that is now being signed by intellectuals and concerned members of civil society around the country. It is time we demanded results from the guardian of the Constitution.

The writer is editor of The Little Magazine. Email: sen@littlemag.com