JOIN USPadma Shri awardee returns prize
Eminent Punjabi writer and Padma Shri awardee Dalip Kaur Tiwana on Tuesday announced to return her award protesting against the threat to free speech and rising communal tension in the country.
She is also a Sahitya Akademi awardee.
Tiwana, 80, who has written to the Union government expressing her displeasure, said: “In this land of Gautama Buddha and Guru Nanak Dev, the atrocities committed on the Sikhs in 1984 and on the Muslims recurrently because of communalism are an utter disgrace to our state and society. And to kill those who stand for truth and justice put us to shame in the eyes of the world and God. In protest, therefore, I return the Padma Shri Award”.
She also expressed solidarity with Nayantara Sahgal and other writers who have also protested on similar lines. She was conferred with the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1971 and Padma Shri in 2004.
Minister’s barb
Reacting to the pattern of returning awards, Union Minister Birender Singh, who was in Chandigarh on Tuesday, said the Sahitya Akademi awardees are essentially committed to a particular ideology.
“Instead of returning their awards, they should raise voice if they feel so strongly,” the minister said.
Kannada writer protests
Kannada writer Prof. Rahamat Tarikeri also returned his Sahitya Akademi Award in protest. On Tuesday, he decided to return the prestigious award as a mark of protest against the killing of scholar M M Kalburgi and rationalists Narendra Dabholkar and Govind Pansare.
In Assam
Assam’s noted litterateur and journalist Homen Borgohain on Tuesday decided to return his Sahitya Akademi Award to protest the growing intolerance in the country.
More follow suit
Writers Krishna Sobti and Arun Joshi have also followed suit, which takes the number of authors returning their Akademi awards to at least 26. Five writers have also stepped down from official positions of the Akademi, which has convened an emergency meeting on October 23 to discuss the matter. In Goa, around 20 writers are expected to meet on Wednesday to discuss the developments, Konkani writer N Shivdas said.