Award wapsi: What really happened is still a mystery!

Was “award wapsi” a genuine protest of principled conscience-keepers of the nation or a mala fide conspiracy against the PM and the government on the eve of the Bihar elections in 2015? Vishwanath Prasad Tiwari’s exposé in Dastavez sheds light on this controversial issue. Tiwari, who was then President of the Sahitya Akademi, ought to know. To his credit, he bore the brunt of the attack, trying to defend both the institution and the community of writers against the polarising force of “award wapsi.” He breaking his silence is thus welcome.

Let us review the facts. A four-month drive was launched by a group of writers and film personalities starting in September 2015 against the growing incidents of communal violence and the NDA government’s inability to protect writers and intellectuals from enemies of free speech. Hindi writer-journalist, Uday Prakash, protesting against the murder on August 30, 2015, of Kannada writer-academic, MM Kalburgi, was the first to return his award.
This was followed by Nayantara Sahgal, eminent Indian English writer-intellectual, who returned her award on October 6, 2018 and Ashok Vajpeyi, Hindi poet and cultural administrator, who followed suit the next day. Sahgal, Jawaharlal Nehru’s niece and Vijayalakshmi Pandit’s daughter, had also opposed the Emergency, imposed by her aunt, Indira Gandhi. Sahgal wrote a dark, scathing portrayal of this period in Rich Like Us (1985). It was this novel which won her the Sahitya Akademi award in 1986, which she returned remonstrating against what she called “The Unmaking of India” and the “vicious assault” on diversity and debate. Vajpeyi, the founder-director of Bhopal’s Bharat Bhavan, one of India’s top cultural bureaucrats, is a well-respected thinker and critic, in addition to being an acclaimed Hindi poet. Vajpeyi currently heads the Raza Foundation.

In all some 50 personalities, of whom nearly 40 were Sahitya Akademi award-winners, returned their awards. These include Krishna Sobti, Mangalesh Dabral, and Kashinath Singh (Hindi), GN Devy and Keki Daruwalla (English), Anil Joshi (Gujarati), Surjit Patar (Punjabi), Nand Bhardwaj, who subsequently took back his award (Rajasthani), Kum Veerbhadrappa and Devanuru Mahadeva (Kannada), Ghulam Nabi Khayal (Kashmiri), Munawwar Rana (Urdu), Sara Joseph (Malayalam), Homen Borgohain (Assamese), and Katyayani Vidmahe (Telugu). A host of cinema notables including Kundan Shah, Saeed Mirza, Dibakar Banerjee, Anand Patwardhan, Dipankar Banerjee, and Tapan Bose also returned their awards. Arundhati Roy returned her National Award for Best Screenplay for In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones (1989), directed by former husband Pradip Krishan, who also gave up his award for Best Feature Film in English for the same movie. An impressive list indeed!

Tiwari tries to prove that these 50-odd award-returners were a part of a well-orchestrated political campaign aimed at tarnishing the Government, ahead of the Bihar assembly elections of 2015. According to him the movement consisted of three groups: Modi-haters, Govt-defamers, and publicity seekers. Tiwari writes: “I have evidence to prove award wapsi was not spontaneous but an organised effort led by five writers, many of whom were holding anti-Modi sabhas even before he came to power.” Vajpeyi, one of the alleged ring-leader, was motivated by “personal reasons and hatred against Modi, the Akademi and Tiwari himself.” Vajpeyi has refuted the charge, sarcastically quipping that Tiwari is too small a personality for him (Vajpeyi) to hate. According to Vajpeyi, the solidarity of writers and filmmakers against the present regime was the need of the hour and that several of those who returned awards did not even know each other personally.

We may never know the whole truth. Tiwari’s article shows the Akademi not only hosted a prayer meeting for Kalburgi in Bengaluru, but also passed a resolution on October 23, 2015, condemning the killing of writers as also the rise of violence in the country. These facts were not highlighted by the award-returners, who portrayed the Akademi as complicit, if not guilty of silence. What is also obvious is that such a big campaign could not have happened spontaneously, but was planned and coordinated. Tiwari’s gripe that “In the world of Hindi literature, not being a Marxist is inviting isolation,” is also largely true, though instead of Marxist, I would say “Leftist or Left-leaning.”

But neither Sahgal nor Vajpeyi are Marxists. In fact the former was in a vicious, decades-long dog-fight with the doyen of Left critics and kingmaker in Hindi literature, Professor Namvar Singh, of JNU. I would say over half of the award-returners are similarly “centrist” liberals, many of them genuinely alarmed by the pro-Hindutva turn in Indian polity and culture post-2014. Was award wapsi a hugely successful movement against intolerance or especially revolting crusade against a legitimately elected government? The answer perhaps lies in between. Politically motivated instigators orchestrated it but it also included genuinely concerned liberals, who thought they had to take a stand.

The author is a poet and professor at JNU. Views expressed are personal.