Writers boycott Bangalore Literature Festival over intolerance row

BENGALURU: New-age Kannada poet Arif Raja and writer TK Dayanand have boycotted the Bangalore Literature Festival (BLF) to be held on December 5 and 6 over the raging debate on intolerance. This move comes in the wake of festival director and author Vikram Sampath's public stand against writers returning their awards and against "leftist historians".

Their letters of withdrawals, copies of which are with ET, say that while they agreed to participate initially, they were forced to rethink their stand in the wake of the festival organisers direct opposition to the writer community.

In his letter, writer Dayanand said, "If asking questions is a crime, if low-castes being alive is a crime, if being rational is a crime, if disapproving one-sided culture is a crime – I welcome the tolling of alarm bells that returning of awards has brought about. I have learned that the organizers of BLF have, in their own ways, understood and criticized writers returning awards. Writers have the right to protest that way (by returning awards). I have no right to sit in judgment of right and wrong on this. Those who cannot understand the terror within one’s spirit cannot understand any literature, writing or anything that can be lively through a festival."

Pointing to Sampath's recent opinion piece in a leading financial daily, poet Arif Raja said in his letter, "In a democracy, the debate on 'to return or not return awards' is a fascist thought. This is a writer's independent prerogative. Sampath's argument that it is politically motivated is childish."

Raja gave examples of how late K. Shivaram Karanth returned his Padma award during the Emergency, how Rabindranath Tagore returned his Knighthood against British atrocities and how hundreds of writers like Kannada's Chandrashekhar Patil fought against the Emergency, lost jobs and languished in jails. "That writers are returning awards is a minimalist form of protest compared to what writers have done in previous examples, I believe," he says.

Asking the writers to reconsider their stand, organiser Vikram Sampath, a Sahitya Akademi awardee himself, told ET that the very nature of the festival was to encourage dissenting voices and present a platform for open discussion, which is why people holding diverse viewpoints were invited. "I respect their opinion and they are entitled to it. Everyone cannot think the same way. People who talk of tolerance, should also be tolerant to different viewpoints."

Interestingly, author Shashi Deshpande, who was one of the first writers to join the intolerance debate by relinquishing her post at the Sahitya Akademi Governing Council, is the keynote speaker at the festival. She told ET, "I look at it just as a festival that offers scope for discussion. If we do not talk to each other, there is no point in protest. But each person can have his own opinion and has every right to feel betrayed."