Nayantara returns Sahitya award over ‘vicious assault’ on India’s diversity

Her gesture, she said, was in protest against the increasing attacks on the right to dissent in India.

Though a niece of our first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, Sahgal, 88, had strained relations with her cousin Indira Gandhi. She first became famous with her 1954 novel “Prison and the Chocolate Cake”.  In a statement, released on Tuesday, explaining her decision, titled “Unmaking of India”, she has referred to the recent mob killing of a Muslim man over rumours that he had eaten beef, and also the killings of rationalists MM Kalburgi, Narendra Dabholkar, and Govind Pansare.

“In memory of the Indians who have been murdered, in support of all Indians who uphold the right to dissent, and of all dissenters who now live in fear and uncertainty, I am returning my Sahitya Akademi Award,” says the writer known for her outspoken views. The right to dissent, she asserts, is an integral part of India’s Constitution. She was awarded the 1986 Sahitya Akademi Award for English, for her novel, “Rich Like Us” (1985), by India’s National Academy of Letters.

Sahgal enjoys a reputation of maintaining her independent critical sense. Her independent tone, and that of her mother Vijay Laxmi <g data-gr-id="40">Pandit,</g> led to both of them falling out with Indira Gandhi during the most autocratic phases of Gandhi’s term in office in the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s. Indira Gandhi cancelled Sahgal’s scheduled appointment as India’s Ambassador to Italy within days of her return to power. Not one to be intimidated, Sahgal in 1982 wrote a scathing, insightful account of Gandhi’s rise to power.

Speaking to news channels Sahgal on Tuesday targeted Prime Minister Narendra Modi. “The Prime Minister is absolutely silent. He has uttered no word of condemnation at all at these incidents. The whole country wishes the Prime Minister to make a statement because the situation is getting more and more serious,” Sahgal told <g data-gr-id="37">media</g> persons. In her statement she mentions, “The Prime Minister remains silent about this reign of terror. We must assume he <g data-gr-id="36">dare</g> not alienate evil-doers who support his ideology.”

“Under Modi we are going backwards, regressing, narrowing down to Hindutva...there is rising intolerance and lots of Indians are living in fear,” she commented. In her statement, she also accuses the Sahitya Akademi, the organisation that promotes Indian literature, of silence. “The Akademis were set up as guardians of the creative imagination, and promoters of its finest products in art and literature, music, and theatre. In protest against <g data-gr-id="33">Kalburgi’s</g> murder, a Hindi writer, Uday Prakash, has returned his Sahitya Akademi Award,” she says in her statement.