SAHITYA AKADAMI ROW

Since after the recent Dadri (UP) lynching incident, which was shocking enough, it appears that it has stirred up the hornets’ nest of a particular type of Sahitya Akadami awardees. By now 22 of them are reported to have surrendered the awrd. Mrs. Nayantara Sahgal, niece of Pt. Nehru who earned this achievement in 1986 has declared also to return the amount accompanying the citation. They also took strong objection to the murder of literary persons in Maharashtra and Karnataka (Kalburgi) and called upon their fellow writers to join the protest against the Prime Minisster. Strangely enough, while the law and order is a state subject and all the three incidents occurred in the said three states, why they have targeted their well orchestrated protest singularly against Narendra Modi. Yet they have not spoken a single word against the concerned three chief ministers. The educated and politically conscious people smell a rat in this mysterious opposition to the Prime Minister.
First of all we have to trace the track record of this bunch to delve into their motive. All of them, by and large are aged people who had a heyday during nearly 45 years of Congress rule at the Centre and in several states. These Congress sympathizers are having leftist leanings. Therefore, all the academic government run institutions were exclusively occupied by them. The worst sufferer was the Indian Council of Historical Research. Such elements not only enjoyed unchecked  the comforts of the key offices but also indulged in tendentious history writing. Mrs. Romila Thapar, Irfan Habib, Dr. D.N. Jha, Ram Chandra Shukla, Dr. Ram sharan Sharma, Dr. Nurul Hasan left no stone unturned to give a tainted picture of the Indian history. If any other scholars differed, their works were denied publication and they were sidetracked. The fund defalcation is a separate story. A former editor of the Indian Express and later a minister in Atal government had published a detailed account of sorry state of affairs in the ICHR.
Now when the regime has changed and their rampant trivializing of facts got ignored, they have become restless. Since they are no more in the limelight, they have turned to this trade union type activity to draw public attention. Let me ask a question, the butchering of over 3,000 Sikhs of 1984 in Delhi was worse or the Bisada/Dadri incident ? Then why Mrs. Sahgal accepted the Sahitya Akdami award in 1986? Was the Muzaffarnagar riot less despicable ? Where were they when inhuman Bhagalpur blinding incidents took place ? Please see the list of these awardees and know the regimes which oblized them. Did any one  of them receive during the rule of Atalji or Modijharmai? Moreover, some days back Sh. Mahesh Sharma, Central Minister for Culture told in an interview that whereas the Padma awards are given on the recommendations of the Government, the selections for the Sahitya Akadami awards are made by a separate committee of  eminent literateurs without any interference from the Govt.
Now the question arises as to why did they prefer this method of protest to defame NDA rule particularly at a time when the Bihar Assembly election was round the corner? Since they have ganged up to pursue their ideological game plan, it is the duty of the common people to expose them by not only paying any heed to them but also telling the people that these rewarded literary persons, really having no love for the minorities, were just manoeuvring to bring back their erstwhile patrons to power.