Why return award, writers can talk to state govts: Minister

Vibha Sharma

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, October 13

Severely sullied in the backwash of a spate of litterateurs returning their state-sponsored awards, the government today asked the writers to air their grievances with the respective state governments or write to the Prime Minister. The ruling BJP was more acerbic terming the protests “larger political conspiracy” against it.

As “growing intolerance” in India towards dissent and minorities wafted across the world, Booker Prize winner Salman Rushdie hit back at “thuggish violence” while dismissing criticism by “Modi Toadies”. Flooded with a barrage of hate messages following his tweet in writers’ support, Rushdie tweeted: "Here come the Modi Toadies. FYI (for your information), Toadies: I support no Indian political party and oppose all attacks on free speech. Liberty is my only party."

The list of writers returning their awards grew longer on Tuesday with eminent Punjabi writer and Padma Shri winner Dalip Kaur Tiwana and Kannada writer Prof Rahamat Tarikeri joining the bandwagon.

Culture Minister Mahesh Sharma said: "Law and order is a state matter and should not be meddled with. Instead of resigning or returning awards, the writers should take up the matter with the respective state governments where the incidents occurred.”

He said: “They (writers) have made the nation proud with their achievements but I want to appeal to them that the platform they have chosen to protest is wrong."

Calling such incidents “mere law and order problem,” BJP’s national secretary from Punjab Tarun Chugh questioned the writers’ motive behind returning the honour.

Chugh wondered why they “tolerated the intolerable” during the previous regimes and did not return awards over “killings of hundreds of Indian jawans by Naxals, specific targeting of Kashmiri Pandits in Kashmir or when more Sikhs were butchered in Delhi”.

“Why did they remain silent when the Pandits were forced to flee the Valley and live like refugees in their own country? It is painful to point out that why these writers didn't understand the pain of a section of society,” Chugh said. — (With agency inputs)