Hindi poet and former Lalit Kala Akademi chairman Ashok Vajpeyi today said it was up to the literary body to accept or decline the returned awards, as he claimed that writers and artistes have succeeded in bringing the issue of intolerance on the national agenda through their protests.
His comments have come a day after the literary body said that it would not encash the cheques returned to it by 39 award winning authors in protest against the "rising intolerance" in the country.
"Just as we have the right to return the award they have a right not to accept it. How can we force them to accept it under any condition? What has happened is, it is the cultural literacy of the media. The issue was not returning the award but the issue was intolerance," Vajpeyi told PTI.
The poet was speaking on the sidelines of the three-day Delhi Poetry Festival that began here today.
Vajpeyi said it was a victory for authors who had succeeded in bringing the issue of intolerance onto a national agenda.
"The Parliament is discussing it. When we met the President he told us that we have succeeded in bringing the issue on national agenda. It is being discussed everywhere and that is all we could have done. So we have succeeded in our attempt," Vajpeyi said.
Stating that authors planned to take the stir further, Vajpeyi said that they planned to organise a Satyagraha on January 30, which marks the death anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi.
"We are continuing our agitation and on 30th January, which is Gandhiji's death anniversary, a convention known as 'Satyagraha' is being organised. We are hoping that it will be happening at many other states as well. We have news that Patna, Bhopal, Allahabad, Varanasi etc will also join," Vajpeyi said.
A total of 39 writers had returned their awards protesting against the Akademi's alleged silence on the murder of fellow writer and Sahitya Akademi board member M M Kalburgi as well as against the growing "communal atmosphere" following the Dadri lynching incident.
Later, the Akademi had convened an emergency meet to condemn the killing.
"The Sahitya Akademi is an institute for the writers, by the writers and of the writers. They are respected writers and are like the family members of the Akademi. They can never be separated from the institution and the Akademi has decided that it will not take back the awards," Akademi's Secretary K Sreenivasarao had said yesterday.
Speaking at the seminar, educationist Krishna Kumar said,
"Gandhi's dream was not an independent country but independent human beings."
While both Gandhi's and Ambedkar's mission to eradicate untouchability cannot be forgotten, the fundamental difference lay in their approach towards the elimination of the social vice.
"Gandhi believed in the dharma of Varnashrama which was opposed by Ambedkar and the latter's demand for separate electorate and reservation for untouchables and other religious communities was unacceptable to Gandhi," Tiwari said.
87-year-old Vatsyayan, who was witness to India's struggle or freedom as a college student said that Gandhi dominated their mental space despite the British education they were exposed to.
"Gandhi represented a figure that stood for much more than just freedom. He represented renunciation. He unclothed himself literally and shed everything that was Western despite whatever he learnt in South Africa," she said.
According to her, Gandhi's prayer meetings spoke of his spiritual dimension which was, "not shared by other two, despite Ambedkar becoming a Buddhist."
Nehru's western outlook, she said, "represented our future."
Asserting that Ambedkar had a relatively lesser influence on her generation, Vatsayan said, "Ambedkar did not occupy our mental space in terms of what we were confronting at that time. Ambedkar touched other parts in terms of empowerment."
The Akademi is also organising separate sessions on different social issues like "Freedom of Expression," "Caste and Equality" and "Women and Equality" etc over the next two days which will see the participation of noted scholars like S L Bhyrappa, K Satchidanandan, Rakshanda Jalil and Bhalchandra Nemade among others.
The festival is set to continue till February 20.
