Malayam novelist Sarah Joseph returns Sahitya Akademi award, K Satchidananda, Shashi Despande resign

“Shocking tales are coming out every day. A writer can’t keep quiet. And higher authorities’ continued silence is really frightening,” Joseph said.

“It is sad people are even denied their basic right to select their food. Intolerance is visible everywhere,” she said commenting about the murder of a Muslim man in Uttar Pradesh’s Bisada village for allegedly slaughtering a cow and eating beef.

“The recent killings of writers and rationalists are really worrying. And people are spilling blood on the street over their right to take their food. Fringe organizations are dictating terms for them what to eat or what not to. Sutation is really scary,” she said.

Earlier in the day, eminent Malayalam poet and critic K Satchidanandan  resigned from all his positions of Sahitya Akademi, the country's premium literary body.


"Holding a ritual condolence meeting in a regional office, as the Akademi seems to have done, is hardly an adequate response to these recent attacks on the freedom of expression, followed by a series of murders of independent thinkers in different parts of the country," Satchidanandan wrote in a scathing letter of resignation addressed  to the Akademi President Vishwanath Prasad Tiwari.

"I am sorry to find that you think this is a “political issue”; to writers like me, this is an issue of our basic freedom to live, think and write. Annihilation should never be allowed to replace argument, the very essence of democracy."

Charging the Akademi of having "failed in its duty to stand with writers and uphold the freedom of expression guaranteed by the Indian Constitution, a freedom which has been violated every day in recent times," the noted poet and critic said he was resigning from the General Council and its Executive Board, and all other positions he held in Akademi, "including the Convenorship of the English Advisory Board, and the membership of its several committees such as the Finance Committee, the Grants Committee and the Building Committee".

On Friday, celebrated writer Shashi Deshpande had  resigned from the Sahitya Akademi General Council.

Deshpande, in her letter,  said she is “deeply distressed by the silence of the Akademi on the murder of Prof Kalburgi”,  a Kannada writer, scholar and winner of the Akademi award, who was shot dead by unidentified assailants in Dharwad in August.

 Deshpande, also an Akademi winner, said “silence is a form of abetment”. 

 Deshpande’s resignation comes after three writers — Uday Prakash, Nayantara Sahgal and Ashok Vajpeyi — returned their Akademi awards as protest against Kalburgi’s killing, and the government’s and Prime Minister’s silence on the issue.