Opinion The republic of one

Inquilab’s family underlines the uneasy relations between the writer and state by declining the Sahitya Akademi award

In the season of literary festivals and prizes, the family of the late Tamil poet and writer Inquilab has declined the 2017 Sahitya Akademi award. The poet, whose work gave voice to the rage and suffering of Dalits and other oppressed communities, died in December 2016. While he lived, say his family members, he had steadfastly refused all forms of state recognition for his work. It stands to reason that he would have said no to this one as well.

There have been other fastidious writers like Inquilab in the past. Jean-Paul Sartre famously refused the Nobel prize for literature because he imagined the writerly life as one of splendid isolation and purity. Awards, he believed, only obscured the relationship between the reader and the word on the page, with the razzle-dazzle of celebrity. Suffice to say, Sartre would have had a thing or two to say to publishers and their marketing machines. Unlike in the past, when poets and artists were dependent on the largesse of kings and nobles, modernity involves a complicated relationship with the nation-state. In theory, a writer is no longer beholden to the state, but to the readers who buy her work and the publishers who invest their money. And yet, in real life, politics permeates into every part of a society. The written word can be a tool of propaganda or hold up a mirror to society. Not all writers who accept awards from the state stand to compromise themselves, of course. But as “unacknowledged legislators of the world”, who shape the collective imagination of a society, they have always been outsiders, looking in. At the heart of this debate is the question: What power does a writer have? What role does she have to play in society? For each writer, that question has to answered on her own terms.

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A stridently political and anti-establishment writer, Inquilab made his choice. He occupied a terrain from where no road can possibly lead to the corridors of power.