Courtesy: Indian Cultural Forum

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The writer in conversation with Sreelakshmi

Image Courtesy: Janata Ka Report

Sahitya Akademi Award winning writer Paul Zacharia recently courted controversy when speaking at  an event organised in honour of the eminent Malayalam writer and cartoonist, O V Vijayan, in Palakkad, Kerala. Zacharia raised objection to the late writer (who is best remembered for his novel Khasakinte Itihasam) accepting the Sanjayan Puraskaram from Thapasya Art and Literary Forum – an organisation affiliated to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). O V Vijayan had received the award in 2004, a year before his death.

Zacharia’s statements charging Vijayan with having right-wing leanings angered many writers in Kerala, especially when he remarked, “If Hitler was alive today and he came and offered me an award, I would refuse it. In fact, if Narendra Modi, the murderer responsible for the killings in 2002 in Gujarat, offers me an award, of course I will refuse it rather than accept it!”

There was clear disagreement even among the writers present at the event, most of who contested Zacharia’s statement regarding O V Vijayan. Besides the writers in Kerala, certain right-wing groups have also taken offence with him for referring to Prime Minister Narendra Modi as a “murderer”. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) secretary for Kerala B Gopalakrishnan threatened to have the writer beaten up unless he issued a public apology to the Prime Minister.

Sreelakshmi from the Indian Cultural Forum spoke to Paul Zacharia, about the issue.

Sreelakshmi (SL): There are reports claiming that you called O V Vijayan a communalist who practiced “soft Hindutva”. Would you like to comment on this?
Paul Zacharia (SL): I did not call O V Vijayan a communalist. I simply wanted to point out that he made a mistake in accepting the award from Thapasya Art and Literary Forum. Vijayan was a soft hearted man. He believed in what others said. It was this simple nature that led him to accept the award from Thapasya, an RSS funded organisation, without looking into the organisation’s work. The point I was trying to make was simple: no writer should accept awards from any religious fundamentalist organisation. Doing so is akin to endorsing such organisations.

SL: Some people have pointed out that, in 2017, you accepted an award from Gulf Madhyamam, which is funded by an Islamic fundamentalist group. Would you like to respond to this?
PZ: Yes. I have faced quite a lot of backlash for accepting that award. In fact, I am planning to write an article on this issue. According to me, Madhyamam’s publications are as credible as Mathrubhoomi’s or Manornama’s. It was Madhyamam that offered me the award. The Gulf Madhyamam, which is one of Madhyamam’s subsidiaries, was one of the sponsors of the award. Both Gulf Madhyamam and Madhyamam are funded by Jamaat-e-Islami. Initially, both these publications only claimed to be news organisations but were actually propaganda channels meant to spread fundamentalist ideology. However, over the past 25-30 years, their work has shown clear secular primciples. Today, almost every writer of note has had their works — poems, short stories, and novels — published in their newspapers and bi-weeklies. A distinguished writer like M Mukundan has had his novels published in these; K Satchidanandan has contributed poems; people like me have written short stories for it.  Moreover, works by people like M T Vasudevan Nair, Sugathakumari, and P Radhakrishnan have also appeared in the Madhyamam weekly. It was this Madhyamam weekly that offered me the award. For me, Madhayamam is a secular journal and many eminent secular thinkers have published their works in it. I find it extremely problematic when people compare Madhyamam with the RSS funded Thapasya. It is an RSS front organisation. Even after all these years, it continues to function as a front organisation. It has never had any secular leanings, and never will.  If we read Thapasya, all that we will learn is communalism. The magazine pits communities against one another; breeds enmity between them. No mainstream writers of merit have ever contributed to this magazine. As opposed to this, Madhyamam magazine has widely covered issues like the discrimination faced by the LGBTQ community, land protests, workers rights, and student protests, among other things.  Even though Madhyamam had communal undertones in the beginning, it has grown to become a secular space. It is no longer informed by Islamic fundamental ideologies.

Besides, we need to understand the difference between the majoritarian and minoritarian fundamentalism. Majoritarian fundamentalism eventually leads to the existence of organisations like Thapasya in Kerala. We need to unmask their principles. When Madhayamam had just started out, they offered me an award. I had refused it back then because I wasn’t sure of their secular credentials. It was during this initial period that they gave an award to the celebrated poet Satchidanandan, who accepted it. Later, it was given to T J S George, a secular democrat. It was after them that I accepted the award. By then, I had seen enough of their work to be sure of their political leanings. Secondly, in principle, I support minorities rather than the majority. But that does not mean I support fundamentalists from minority communities. I hope I have made my stand clear regarding this. Any form of fundamentalism will only lead to violence, be it Hinduism, Christianity, Islam, Sikhism, Judaism,  or any other religion.

Sreelakshmi is a member of the editorial collective of the Indian Writers’ Forum.

Courtesy: Indian Cultural Forum

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Seventy-seven-year-old renowned rationalist thinker and writer, MM Kalburgi, was shot dead at his home in Dharwad in August 2015.

Soon after this, news regarding the murders of anti-superstition activist, Narendra Dabolkar and CPI leader, Govind Pansare, being connected to Kalburgi’s death, had writers across the country return their awards to the Sahitya Akademi.
A year later, have things changed?

‘No’, says Karnataka’s prominent critic, G Rajasekhar.

On Wednesday, he rejected an award announced by the Karnataka Sahitya Akademi for his work Bahuvachana Bharatha, published in 2016.

The writer said that his decision to reject the award was because two years after the murder of Kalburgi, there has been no adequate investigation into the case.

“The RSS’ influence has seeped into many organisations and the growing intolerance in the country led the writers to return their awards. The situation in our country has worsened. Now we have people telling us what we can and cannot eat. In the name of Indian culture, the RSS is shaming the country further. Now, even the media outlets, known for their liberal view are buying into the RSS propaganda and this is a kind of fascism. The RSS is spreading its wings into every sector of the society. It is not only controlling the government, but is trying to control how the society works as well. Rejecting the award is my way of protesting against this intolerance,” said Rajasekhar.

“It has been two years since the writer died and there has been no progress in the investigation. Also, the Dabolkar and Pansare cases have come to a standstill. It will be absurd to accept an award under such circumstances. The Opposition party in Karnataka pounced at the opportunity to gain political footing after the deaths of police officers but it has not spoken about the death of this prominent writer, which is why I rejected the award,” Rajasekhar added.

The Central Crime Branch had arrested Bhuvith Shetty, the co-convenor of the Bajrang Dal unit in Mangaluru in August 2015 for posting a tweet justifying the murder of Kalburgi and warning that scholar K S Bhagwan, another rationalist free-thinker, would be their next target.

Shetty, who later withdrew his remarks from Twitter, was released on bail.

Cadres of the Sanathan Sanstha, a right-wing Hindutva organisation, had been detained in June 2016 for questioning in connection with the murder of Dabolkar. However, the investigation has been in a limbo since then.

Courtesy: The News Minute

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खराब स्वास्थ्य से उबर रहे राजशेखर ने 'द हिंदू' से  बात करते हुए कहा कि साल 2015 में कई लेखकों ने देश में बढ़ती असहिष्णुता और हिंसा के चलते पुरस्कार वापस लौटा दिए। तथ्य ये है कि स्थिति सुधरी नहीं है, बल्कि लगातार खराब होती गई है।
उन्होंने कहा, 'पुरस्कार लौटाने वाले लेखकों के प्रति समर्थन जताने के लिए मैंने कर्नाटक साहित्य अकादमी अवॉर्ड स्वीकार न करने का फैसला किया है।' 

बता दें कि कर्नाटक साहित्य अकादमी के लिए जी. राजशेखर की किताब 'बहुवचन भारत' को चुना गया है। इस किताब में समकालीन राजनीतिक मुद्दों और साहित्य पर लेख शामिल हैं। 

राजशेखर ने कहा, 'दक्षिणपंथी ताकतें असहमति की आवाजों को केवल दबा रही हैं, बल्कि उनकी कोशिश है कि असहमति की कोई भी आवाज न उठे। देश में पहले से ही असहिष्णुता के मुद्दे पर बहस चल रही है। उत्तर प्रदेश के दादरी में मोहम्मद अखलाक के घर पर हमले से लेकर कर्नाटक के तटीय जिले में अल्पसंख्यक समुदाय के व्यक्ति पर हमला बताता है कि स्थिति बदली नहीं है।'

The post ‘बढ़ती असहिष्णुता’ को वजह बताते हुए एक और लेखक ने ठुकराया कर्नाटक साहित्य अकादमी अवॉर्ड : अमर उजाला appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Courtesy: www.indianculturalforum.in

Let me begin by wishing us all a happier New Year than the past year has been.

Last year, we had to watch a series of events that attacked our democratic right of freedom of expression and our culture of secularism. It was a dangerous trend that we could not ignore, and we did not ignore it. Many of us took action against it, and the general public reaction against this trend sounded a note of warning to those who were responsible for it. But the danger is by no means over.

Just the other day I was planning to see the movie Bajirao Mastani in Dehra Dun where I live, but a bunch of people turned up at the cinema and stopped it from being shown. The same thing has happened in Mumbai and I don’t know where else. And it has happened with other movies, books, book launches, music concerts, exhibitions of paintings and so on. A gang turns up, maybe armed with sticks and stones, or black paint, or guns, and forces the closure of whatever they disagree with. It has become so usual, that apart from a small paragraph in the newspapers, nothing happens to the thugs who go on behaving this way.

There have been incidents of violence against free expression before, but they didn’t have the protection of people in power. Now the attack on dissent is both official – to wipe out history and science and replace them with mythology – and unofficial, by thugs, who have gone to the extent of murdering and lynching those who disagree with them. So the question is, Are we going to let other people dictate what we should read, or look at, or listen to?

In the last year and a half, this has become a question we can’t ignore. This is why many writers like me returned our Sahitya Akademi Awards in protest against the murder of three writers – two of them well-known rationalists who had refused to kowtow to superstition. When these assassinations were followed by the brutal lynching of a poor blacksmith, Mohammad Akhlaq, on the excuse that he was a beef eater, the whole country was shocked and revolted. Many scientists, historians, film makers and film stars spoke up against the rising tide of hatred in the country, and the trampling of human rights. The President, and earlier the Vice President, had already spoken out against this ugliness.

It was clear these were not isolated incidents. They are not just part of a fringe mentality that wants to control the way we live and think, and eat and worship. They are part and parcel of the outlook known as Hindutva whose objective is to establish a Hindu rashtra – which will divide Indians into Hindus and Others, treating all others as second-class citizens. So these incidents are an attack on our Indianness, and on the very meaning of India, which chose, at independence, to reject a religious identity, and become a secular democratic republic.

They are part and parcel of the outlook known as Hindutva whose objective is to establish a Hindu rashtra – which will divide Indians into Hindus and Others, treating all others as second-class citizens. So these incidents are an attack on our Indianness, and on the very meaning of India, which chose, at independence, to reject a religious identity, and become a secular democratic republic.

One way of raising our voices against this threat is by holding festivals of literature like this one [in Hyderabad], where writers and readers and critics can get together to discuss and debate, and agree or disagree. This way, we give public notice of the fact that writers will go on writing the stories they want to write, publishers will go on publishing them, readers will read what they wish to read, and that none of us will toe the line of those who want to make rules about how we should think, or live, or worship, and they certainly cannot tell us what we should or should not eat.

Life and literature are not in separate compartments, which is why our fight for the freedom to write has become a much larger one connected with our lives in general. In the past year, we have heard strange announcements that will affect our daily lives unless we vigorously oppose them. We have been hearing that women must be home before dark, that married women must confine themselves to looking after their homes, and not work outside their homes. Apparently their job in life is to stay pregnant, since we are told that a Hindu wife should produce a certain number of children so that the Hindu population increases. We might well ask ourselves, is this for real? But what else can we think, when these fantastic statements come from leading lights of the ruling Hindutva ideology, and no one in authority has contradicted them?

Women are always the worst victims of fundamentalism, so how is such a mindset, if it is allowed to have its way, going to affect the lives of Indian women — barring the wealthy, independent upper crust, and those who are lucky enough to live in a liberal environment? We are already coping with a primitive mindset in parts of our society that forbids menstruating women, or any women, from entering temples; a mindset that aborts female foetuses, that persecutes or kills women for more dowry, that savagely punishes inter-religious or inter-caste marriages, and that calls rape the fault of the way women dress. Crimes against women are commonplace among us. Do we really need a fundamentalist mindset to make such thinking socially acceptable, and respectable? As it is, we are living in a world where the Taliban and ISIS and other fanatics are making life hell-on-earth for those who disagree with them, and reducing women to sub-human status. So we don’t need any home-grown fanatics adding their own brands of madness to the madness that already surrounds us.

Debate and dissent are part of Indian tradition, and they have never been confined to intellectuals. We have heard voices from the ground up, protesting against the Bhopal gas disaster, taking part in the Narmada Bachao Andolan, in the Chipko movement in Uttarakhand to protect the forests from destruction, on nuclear issues, and on many other issues that affect the lives of the aam-admi. And this right to dissent is particularly important today on the national level when we have to decide whether we want to go on building a modern society in the 21^st century, which will remain open to knowledge and reason, or be pushed backwards into unreason, superstition, and ignorance.

Raising our voices against the backward tide has made a difference. I have noticed that Christmas was allowed to be Christmas this year and there was no nonsense about calling it “good governance day”. Gandhi Jayanti, which was reduced to Jhadoo Day last year, has not quite been restored to a day of remembrance of one of the greatest men of all time – but at least ministers wielding jhadoos (brooms) have not filled the TV screens.

In a democracy, public opinion has a huge role to play in reversing an evil tide. And fiction and films influence public opinion, not by making political statements or polemics, but by the stories they tell and the way they tell them. The greatest of these have always involved themselves with the controversies of their times, whether these were political, social or economic. I am reminded of a film classic of the 1940s called The Great Dictator, produced and acted by Charlie Chaplin. At a time when Europe was occupied and terrorised by Hitler, Chaplin made him a ridiculous figure and a laughing stock in a hilarious comedy. We have no shortage of creative genius in our many languages and in our film world. So it is a great time for creative people to go to work – through wit, irony, satire, and sheer comedy – on all that is happening today.

So let me wish us all a year of great writing. And let me end by rejecting Hindutva and wishing us all a New Year of Hindustaniat and insaniyat.

(This the text of the lecture Nayantara Sahgal delivered at the Hyderabad Literary Festival on January 7, 2016.)

Context:
As Guest of Honour at the recent Hyderabad Literary Festival, Nayantara Sahgal made a strong case for continuing resistance to the Hindutvadi goal of a Hindu rashtra. Despite writers, scholars, artists film makers and scientists raising their voices over the last few months, Sahgal said, “The danger is by no means over… our fight for the freedom to write has become a much larger one connected with our lives in general.”

The audience gave Sahgal a standing ovation. The Chief Guest on the occasion, however, Governor E.S.L. Narasimhan, a former director of the Intelligence Bureau, skipped his prepared speech for a rant on “subjective dissent”. Claiming that freedom of expression is a universal right but dissent is a subjective matter that depends on “interpretation”, he likened the recent killings and polarisation to “family disputes”. His response to Sahgal’s call for resistance to attacks on Indianness was a familiar line about the greatness of our nation, home to the richest language of all, Sanskrit. Narasimhan also blamed civil society for its “double standards”, asking if civil society is “only for terrorists…” Proof if any were needed that the resistance must continue.

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