Official goof-up? Navalkar is there to apologise

“The CM should now apologise to me in front of at least 1,500 people, the approximate number that were present at the function that day,” demanded the sulky prima donna.

In response, Joshi claimed he did not recall any such incident; proffered an apology in passing; briskly asked Majrooh to accept the award with a “big heart”; and promptly passed the buck to the organisers. “Majrooh Sultanpuri should know that the Chief Minister does not decide how a programme should be organised or what procedure should be followed in a felicitation function. If the organiser of a programme makes certain mistakes will you hold the CM responsible?”

Navalkar, of course, apologised.

It’s something he’s getting very good at, scorned Thackeray in the Sena mouthpiece Saamna after Navalkar went and said sorry to Gopinath Munde when his department omitted to print the Deputy Chief Minister’s name on the invitation cards for the Maharashtra Bhushan Award presented to Lata Mangeshkar in November. Munde boycotted the function. “I do not want to be an uninvited guest,” he said.

Barely had Navalkar digested the humble pie when the department for cultural affairs struck again. Munde’s name was found missing from the invitations to the state literary awards, forcing the the minister to send hundreds of hurried post-scripts: Any function to which the Chief Minister is invited, the Deputy Chief Minister is automatically invited…”

But pacifying Munde has been least of Navalkar’s problems. The barrage of artists’ resentment, first breached by Maharashtra’s most well known satirist P L Deshpande, when he criticised the Sena-BJP Government for “suppressing democracy”, collapsed all over when Asha Bhonsle lashed out in public against the government for meting out “step-sisterly treatment” to her.

She claimed the government had never recognised her contribution to music and added that at a function to felicitate Hridaynath Mangeshkar she was “not asked to make a speech,” despite the fact that she was present on the stage.

This was followed by the resignation of noted translator AMI Dalvi as the chairperson of the Urdu Academy, because, Dalvi said the Academy was not honouring its word on the award to Ali Sardar Jafri. Dalvi claimed the award was being denied to Jafri because of a controversial poem titled Ayodhya.

Dalvi’s resignation was followed by several other members of the Urdu Academy including the likes of Dr Ram Pandit and Nida Fazli.

And now comes the Majrooh Sultanpuri episode.

But behind the bunglings and the game of passing-the-buck-that-always-lands-on-Navalkar’s-table, is a larger issue: Is the Sena-BJP Government deliberately alienating the artistic community.

“More than alienation it is a question of respect,” says eminent historian Y D Phadke. “Essentially this government does not appreciate the concept of freedom of expression but at the same time these politicians keep distributing sundry awards in the hope of buying over their approval.”

Phadke who was a close friend of Bal Thackeray’s father, lauds Majrooh Sultanpuri for the “courage to come out against the Chief Minister” and adds by way of a clincher: “To appreciate culture and literature one has to be well-versed in these matters. But these poor politicians have hardly read anything so what will they understand about literature.” Or literary egos he may well have added.

As for Navalkar, he’s taking a breather at the winter Assembly Session in Nagpur. The last apology, you see, was particularly galling: This year’s Maharashtra Literary Award was given to a certain Anjali Kulkarni of Pune.

Navalkar’s department sent the good tidings to the author and to another Nashik-based writer, also called Anjali Kulkarni. On the day of the awards both Anjalis turned up, proud families in tow. There was only one way to salvage the situation: by saying sorry.