THE SAHITYA AWARD MARTYRS

The moment I heard “Nayantara Sahgal is like Gurudev Tagore,” I rushed out to dig out her ‘Gitanjali,’ her ‘Jana Gana Mana’,’ her ‘Rabindra Sangeet,’ her ‘Last Harvest,’ . . .

I was still digging furiously when the voice pulled me by the ear, “not as a romancier, you idiot, as a protester.”

Oh, that. Gurudev returned his Knighthood in protest against Jallianwala Bagh. Had Nayantara recently detected another “Bagh”? Well Nayantara ji, your ‘Rich Like Us’ does not apply to us commoners.

“And she is the niece of erstwhile PM of India,” the voice continued, “whose nephew was Gurudev?” asked the voice. That clinched it. Gurudev is no patch on Nayantara, or on Shobha De of ‘Small Betrayals,’ a strong votary for ‘returning’ who missed the Sahitya by a whisker, the voice says, and so is in no position to return that which she never got.

Frankly, though, the actions of these hi-bro intellectuals leave me as confused as their pretentious writing.

Where were these award returning romanciers, for example, when 2300+ Sikhs were massacred in Delhi in 1984 (the only incident that comes close to the ‘Bagh’ massacre), when the then PM said when a big tree falls the earth is bound to shake a bit, when Mujjafarnagar riots happened, when 'The Satanic Verse' was banned, when Taslima was physically assaulted in Hyderabad, when Pandits were externed, made refugees in their own country, their women raped, when emergency was imposed and basic rights suspended and Sanjay went on a rampage, when . . .

Were they right then or are they right now?

And why did their star, Nayantara, accept the Sahitya from her nephew, Rajiv G, two years after the Sikh massacre?

And what about the romanciers who have not handed-in their Sahitya. Are they traitors to the cause?

The romanciers have the right to return their Sahitya, their marriage certificate, their birth certificate, and all and sundry certificates. But let them not claim the moral high ground, the pulpit, from which to preach their ‘selective outrage,’ their ‘double standards’  camouflaged as high morality which they never practiced till this opportunity to be grand came about.