Gujarat civil society seeks withdrawal of editorial criticising poem on Covid deaths

Days after an editorial published in Gujarat Sahitya Akademi's mouthpiece calling everyone praising a poem titled "Shav Vahini Ganga" as "literary Naxals," a group of prominent civil society members have issued a statement demanding withdrawal of the editorial.

Gujarat Sahitya Akademi in the latest edition of its magazine "Shabdsrushti" has published an anonymous essay titled "No this is not a poem, it is the misuse of a poem for anarchy..." while criticising the poem and its author without identifying them.

The statement issued by the members on Thursday said, "The necessary obligation of writing the author’s name is not honoured which should be deemed immoral, criminal and dangerous according to government procedures."

"The anonymous writer (of the essay) makes outrageous statements such as ‘the poem is bad though the poet is good’, and through such insinuations attempts to issue an indirect threat to Gujarati writers indicating in an authoritative voice what they should write and what they should not write. This is reminiscent of the time of The Emergency (During the Emergency in 1975 newspapers and journals had to be approved by government officials) and is absolutely condemnable. This is beating the pen with the hammer, a death knell for the right to freedom of expression of Gujarati writers," the statement read.

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Over 170 people have signed the statement including Mallika Sarabhai, Nirjhari Sinha, Abhijit Joshi, Manishi Jani, Ghanshyam Shah, Salil Tripathi, Gulammohammed Sheikh, Hanif Lakdawala, Dakxin Chhara, Dev Desai, Mehul Dholakia, Zakia Soman, among others.

"In an attempt to gag the glorious literary tradition of Gujarat this government-controlled institution, which functions in a democratic structure, has opened the floodgates for a practice that goes against the interests of the people and has a dangerous and fascist tendency which we strongly condemn," reads the statement.

In the eye of the controversy is the Gujarati poem "Shav Vahini Ganga" (Ganga, the carrier of corpses) written by Parul Khakhar, originally from Rajkot, who lives in Amreli. She had posted it on her Facebook page in early in May and since then it has been translated into several languages.

The poem describes large scale deaths due to coronavirus pandemic and crowded crematoriums. It talks about the "Ram Rajya" (Kingdom of Lord Ram), where the river Ganga has become a "shav vahini" or hearse.