Sahitya Akademi resignations: It’s manufactured revolt, says FM Arun Jaitley

NEW DELHI: The decision of several Sahitya Akademi writers to return their awards was a “manufactured revolt” intended to blame the Union government for incidents such as the lynching of a Muslim in Dadri, even though state governments were responsible for maintaining law and order, finance minister Arun Jaitley has said.

Condemning the Dadri incident in a Facebook post on Wednesday, Jaitley questioned the intentions of the writers: “Is this protest real or a manufactured one? Is this not a case of ideological intolerance?” Stating that there were, “large number of writers with Left or Nehruvian leaning who have been recognised by the government in the past, Jaitley alleged, “the thrust of the writers’ protest appears to be that under the present central government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, an atmosphere of intolerance has been created in the country.”

He said that with the political fortunes of Congress declining, and the Left being pushed to the margins, the anti-Modi, anti-BJP sections were resorting to “politics by other means”.

“For a cause against the Modi government, the protesting writers have struggled hard to find a reason.” Jaitley referred to the murders of rationalist Kalburgi in Congress-ruled Karnataka, and Dabholkar during the tenure of the erstwhile Congress regime in Maharashtra. “Both incidents need to be condemned in no uncertain terms. It is the responsibility of the state government to maintain law and order and provide security to a vulnerable target of attack.

Similarly, the Dadri incident took place in Uttar Pradesh, which is ruled by the Samajwadi Party. ‘Politics by other means,’ now dictates an alternative strategy. Combine the three crimes, camouflage the truth and throw all of them in the basket of present central government,” Jaitley said.

He emphasised that none of the protests had raised any allegations against the states. “In fact, one of the protesting writers in 2015 while returning her Padma Shri has cited the Sikh killings of 1984 as one of her reasons. It took 31 years for this writer’s conscience to be aroused by the genocide of 1984.

"There is no atmosphere of intolerance in the country. The manufactured revolt is a case of an ideological intolerance towards the BJP,” he said. The writer was given the award only in 2004.