Poem on bodies in Ganga: Gujarat Sahitya Akademi sees ‘anarchy’, ‘literary Naxals’

An editorial in the June edition of Gujarat Sahitya Akademi’s official publication, Shabdashrushti, has hit out at a poem by Gujarati poet Parul Khakhar on the bodies of suspected Covid victims found floating in the Ganga in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar for spreading “anarchy”. It also called those who discussed or circulated it “literary Naxals”.

The Akademi’s chairman, Vishnu Pandya, confirmed writing the editorial. While it does not mention Shav Vahini Ganga specifically, he also confirmed that he meant the poem, which has drawn much praise and been translated into several languages.

Describing the poem as “pointless angst expressed in a state of agitation”, the editorial says the words had been “misused by forces who are anti-Centre and anti-Centre’s nationalist ideologies”. “The said poem has been used as a shoulder to fire from by such elements who have started a conspiracy, whose commitment is not to India but to something else, who are Leftist, so-called liberals, to whom nobody pays any attention… Such people want to quickly spread chaos in India and create anarchy… They are active on all fronts and in the same way they have jumped into literature with dirty intentions. The purpose of these literary Naxals is to influence a section of people who would relate their own grief and happiness to this (the poem).” While in Gujarati, the editorial uses the term “literary naxals”.