Arundhati Roy AFP photo
Acclaimed writer and political activist Arundhati Roy seems to be the latest in a long line of intellectuals who have decided to return their awards to the government in the face of ‘growing intolerance’ in India.
Arundhati Roy has announced her decision via an article in the Indian Express. In the article, Roy says that “Although I do not believe that awards are a measure of the work we do, I would like to add the National Award for Best Screenplay that I won in 1989 to the growing pile of returned awards”.
Please spare me the old Congress-vs-BJP debate. It’s gone way beyond all that.
The Sahitya Akademi is India’s premier institution of letters, with a stated commitment to “promoting Indian literature throughout the world”.Although I do not believe that awards are a measure of the work we do, I would like to add the National Award for Best Screenplay that I won in 1989 to the growing pile of returned awards. Also, I want to make it clear that I am not returning this award because I am “shocked” by what is being called the “growing intolerance” being fostered by the present government. First of all, “intolerance” is the wrong word to use for the lynching, shooting, burning and mass murder of fellow human beings. Second, we had plenty of advance notice of what lay in store for us — so I cannot claim to be shocked by what has happened after this government was enthusiastically voted into office with an overwhelming majority. Third, these horrific murders are only a symptom of a deeper malaise. Life is hell for the living too. Whole populations — millions of Dalits, Adivasis, Muslims and Christians — are being forced to live in terror, unsure of when and from where the assault will come.
Today, we live in a country in which, when the thugs and apparatchiks of the New Order talk of “illegal slaughter”, they mean the imaginary cow that was killed — not the real man who was murdered. When they talk of taking “evidence for forensic examination” from the scene of the crime, they mean the food in the fridge, not the body of the lynched man. We say we have “progressed”, but when Dalits are butchered and their children burned alive, which writer today can freely say, like Babasaheb Ambedkar once did, that “to the untouchables, Hinduism is a veritable chamber of horrors”, without getting attacked, lynched, shot or jailed? Which writer can write what Saadat Hasan Manto wrote in his “Letters to Uncle Sam”? It doesn’t matter whether we agree or disagree with what is being said. If we do not have the right to speak freely, we will turn into a society that suffers from intellectual malnutrition, a nation of fools. Across the subcontinent it has become a race to the bottom — one that the New India has enthusiastically joined. Here too now, censorship has been outsourced to the mob.
I am very pleased to have found (from somewhere way back in my past) a National Award that I can return, because it allows me to be a part of a political movement initiated by writers, filmmakers and academics in this country who have risen up against a kind of ideological viciousness and an assault on our collective IQ that will tear us apart and bury us very deep if we do not stand up to it now. I believe what artists and intellectuals are doing right now is unprecedented, and does not have a historical parallel. It is politics by other means. I am so proud to be part of it. And so ashamed of what is going on in this country today.
Postscript: For the record, I turned down the Sahitya Akademi Award in 2005 when the Congress was in power. So please spare me that old Congress-versus-BJP debate. It has gon
– See more at: http://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/why-i-am-returning-my-award/#sthash.GKHfPPN8.dpuf
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November 5, 2015 at 7:04 pm
Dear Madam Arundhati,
I think your talk of intolerance now is absolutely absurd. Where were you when Congress massacred Sikhs in 1984 for just a reason that the person who killed was a Sikh.Also I would say that Law and order is a state subject. How killing of Dadri can be linked to National Crime. It is a law and order problem of Uttar Pradesh. Where were you during Nirbhaya case, was that not intolerance for you. I think you are just motivated by your selfish reasons. Want to get glorified by demeaning the Central Govt. Want to get limelight I think. Nothing much happening in your life and so you want some cheap publicity. If you are ashamed of your country please feel free to vacate this country and join some other different tolerant nation if you think so. Nobody is forcing you to stay in this country.