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Journalism of Courage
Clarifying that he has never said that the entire country has become intolerant, eminent Hindi poet Ashok Vajpeyi, who had returned his Sahitya Akademi award in protest, on Thursday said India has always been tolerant and will remain so.
“We never said the country was intolerant, rather some forces of intolerance are being given certain attention,” the 75-year-old writer said during a literary meet at the Kolkata Book Fair. “The country as a whole, people at large, India as a civilisation, has been plural, diverse and tolerant through millennia and will continue to remain so because the people of this country will not allow the elements of intolerance to have a hay day,” Vajpayi said.
The Hindi poet was among the first of about 40 writers who had returned their awards in the past few months to the Sahitya Akademi in protest against the literary body’s silence on attacks on free thinkers such as M M Kalburgi, Narendra Dabholkar and Govind Pansare.
Read | Poet Ashok Vajpeyi returns doctorate he got from Hyderabad Central University
“It is being made out as if we are addressing the government, but we are not. We are addressing the people because ultimately it is the people who are going to decide what kind of country they want,” Vajpeyi said.
The prime issue, he maintained, was the quality of politics in the country and the reduction of political processes as only a means to remain in power. “Equality and justice” were no longer the aim of politics, the poet said, instead the “corporatisation” of politics has taken over, which sought only to remain in power in a country where ‘intolerance’ remains a massive crisis.
Expressing anguish over the suicide of Dalit research scholar Rohith Vemula, he said, “Vemula’s suicide establishes the fact that places where knowledge must be free, there is such discrimination. Instead of addressing that, we have ministers who are digging out stupid details to tell us that Vemula was not a Dalit.”
