By IndiaTomorrow.net,
New Delhi, 15 Oct 2015: India’s eminent award-winning novelist Amitav Ghosh has strongly condemned both the government and Sahitya Akademi for maintaining silence over attacks on writers and freedom of speech in the country.
In an interview to The Indian Express, Ghosh also appreciated “the courage and commitment” of the writers who have returned their awards in protest against the Akademi’s silence over the recent attacks on writers.
“There can be no doubt that the present government is tacitly enabling these attacks by failing to take punitive and preventive action. In refusing to protest, the Sahitya Akademi is shamefully in dereliction of its duties,” said Ghosh who received the Akademi award 25 years ago in 1990.
While appreciating the writers who are returning their awards, he refused to return his own saying it would amount to a “repudiation of the institution’s history.” He said the outrage “should be directed at the present leadership of the Sahitya Akademi rather than the institution as such.”
As mark of protest against the growing intolerance in the country, Dadri lynching and attacks on writers, more than three dozen writers and poets including Nayantara Sahgal and Ashok Vajpayee have returned their Akademi awards or resigned from posts at the body.
Noted Punjabi writer Dalip Kaur Tiwana has returned her Padma Shri award.
Ghosh suggested that writers should come together to chart a future course of action.
Some of the famous works of Amitav Ghosh include his first novel The Circle of Reason, The Shadow Lines, The Glass Palace and his eighth novel Flood of Fire.
