A fortnight and a few days have slipped past that grim event. It was as if the wedding preparations were complete and the groom’s face was about to be unveiled behind the ceremonial tinsel. At 3 PM on December 18, a press conference was poised to announce the Sahitya Akademi Awards.
But just minutes before the reveal, a government fiat landed: no awards were to be announced without clearance from the Ministry. Citing a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the Ministry and various academies, the instruction—correction, the command—was clear: no final announcements until the ongoing "restructuring process" is complete. Restructuring or deconstructing, call it what you will, the crux is simple: awards, rewards, and recognition will now happen when the benevolent government says, how the government says, and to whom the government says.
Unfortunately, this trajectory toward total state control became overt back in 2015. Following the martyrdom of scholar M.M. Kalburgi, the Akademi adopted a stance that aligned it, directly or indirectly, with the establishment. This triggered a righteous wave of "Award Wapsi" (returning of awards) across the country, signaling a deep-seated malaise that has now culminated in this open interference.
The discerning reader will recall that, according to the original research of the learned Kangana Ranaut, India only truly became independent in 2014. In this new understanding of "freedom," the very concept of autonomy is viewed as antiquated. For a fresh perspective on what autonomy means today, one need only look at the parliamentary standing committee report presented in mid-2023 regarding the return of awards.
Out of forty-one members, a staggering majority of thirty-nine MPs declared that "unseemly incidents" like returning awards tarnish the prestige of the honors. Their remedy? To establish a system where honored personalities provide advance consent and a written guarantee that they will not return the award in the future. Furthermore, it was suggested that anyone who returns an award should be blacklisted from future honors. When one considers this "wise" counsel from an NDA-dominated committee, the true meaning of the alleged "restructuring" requires no further explanation.
To understand how far we have drifted, one must look back at the Akademi’s genesis. Established by figures like Jawaharlal Nehru, Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, and Maulana Azad, the Akademi’s first president was Nehru—not by virtue of his office, but as a respected writer in his own right. He insisted from the outset that while the funding would come from the Ministry, the administration would belong to the literary community, not government bureaucrats. Decisions were to remain with the scholars and writers serving the institution. Clarifying this, Nehru famously remarked that as President of the Akademi, he would not tolerate any interference from the Prime Minister.
When the Akademi jury once selected Rahul Sankrityayan for an award, a question was raised in the executive board: could a man associated with the Communist Party, then under scrutiny, be eligible? Nehru replied without hesitation that the literary merit for which he was chosen remained unchanged, and there was no room for a "government-style" rethink. Even Indira Gandhi, a far more complex figure than Nehru regarding power, provides an example. When a jury selected a Punjabi book that contained sharp criticism of her, Education Minister Arjun Singh noted that while the government disagreed with the criticism, it would not override the jury’s decision on literary merit.
Contrast this with the situation in Gujarat during Chimanbhai Patel’s tenure as Chief Minister. At that time, the Gujarat Sahitya Akademi was moving toward autonomy. The legendary writer 'Darshak' (Manubhai Pancholi) took a keen interest in drafting an autonomous constitution. He and Chimanbhai thought that by registering the Akademi under the Societies Registration Act of 1860, similar to the Delhi model, they could insulate it from state interference. In hindsight, one might argue they should have sought a legislative act in the Assembly for stronger protection, but at the time, the Delhi model seemed unassailable.
Yet, Gujarat will be Gujarat. It always leads the way. The state’s autonomous Akademi was eventually swallowed by the government; its elected writers never saw their terms fulfilled, and "parachute presidents" became the norm. This is the celebrated "Gujarat Model." We should now prepare for the National Sahitya Akademi to follow this same downward path—roots in the air, branches in the dirt. Where is the Diogenes who can tell the King, "Stand out of my sunlight"? The poet Agyeya once measured Indira Gandhi’s era with the line, "The intellectuals have been summoned." To the current regime, one can only say: may you too find an Agyeya to hold up the mirror to your future.
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*Veteran Gujarati litterateur
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