Has India’s tolerance reached its limit?

New Delhi: Dissenting against an alleged attempt to muzzle free speech and individual rights, several top Indian writers, film makers, historians and scientists have joined the award returning spree.

Over the last month, a large number of artistes and intellectuals have stepped up protest against silence of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi over the murder of noted author M.M. Kalburgi allegedly for his rationalist views, the public lynching of a man over rumours of eating beef and an overall rise of intolerance.

Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan on Monday said that there indeed was widespread intolerance in the country and he would not hesitate in giving up his awards, if asked to.

“As a symbolic gesture I would give it up. I do think there is intolerance. There is extreme intolerance,” Khan said on his 50th birthday today, adding that “the biggest mistake a patriot can make is to go against secularism in India.”

Jharkhand’s first national award winning film-maker Shri Prakash has also returned the honour to protest the growing intolerance in the country.

“I am very sad to return the National Award, which was the first for Jharkhand. I still remember the day when then President Pratibha Patil had handed over the award. But I have no other way to lodge my protest but to return the award. People are being murdered for their beliefs and opinions. Democratic protest is unheard. In such situation, how will an artist lodge his protest,” Prakash told the Gulf News.

Prakash had won the national award for the best film on social issues in 2008 for ‘Buru Garra’ (The Wild Rivulet), a sensitive tale on two women achievers of the state.

Besides him, the filmmakers who have decided to return their National Awards are Dibakar Banerjee, Anand Patwardhan, Paresh Kamdar, Nishtha Jain, Kirti Nakhwa, Harshavardhan Kulkarni, Hari Nair, Rakesh Sharma, Indraneel Lahiri and Lipika Singh Darai.

“We have watched the murders of rationalists and writers like Dr Narendra Dabholkar, Govind Pansare and M M Kalburgi with dismay. These are clearly not random acts of violence. People are being murdered for their beliefs and opinions,” film maker Dibakar Banerjee said.

“There seems to be no attempt to unravel the larger picture and bring to book extremist groups that believe in ruthless violence to eliminate those who hold a counter view from theirs. There has been no official condemnation of these groups and we question this silence,” film-maker Anand Patwardhan told the Gulf News.

Likewise, top scientist PM Bhargava, who has decided to return his Padma Bhushan to protest against “the government’s attack on rationalism, reasoning and science”, has slammed the Narendra Modi government and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).

Bhargava said the Modi government and RSS are trying to dictate what we eat and do.

“This constraint on my freedom is something I do not like, so the most I can do in protest is return my award. We do not want our democracy to be replaced with religious dictatorship. The Padma Bhushan had a special place in my collection of more than 100 awards for science. Now I feel no sentimental attachment to it when the government tries to institutionalise religion and curtail freedom and scientific spirit,” Bhargava, founder-director of the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB), said.

Last week, over 100 senior scientists had signed an online petition over the same issue. Other scientists, including two more Padma Bhushan recipients Ashoke Sen and P. Balram, have also announced their decision to return their awards.

Voicing concern over incidents of intolerance, a group of scientists has petitioned President Pranab Mukherjee urging him to initiate “suitable actions”. The petition, signed by scientists and academicians, including Naresh Dadich, former Director of Pune-based Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA) and G. Rajasekaran of Institute of Mathematical Sciences (IMSc) besides some from Jawaharlal Nehru University and Harish-Chandra Research Institute, Allahabad, lauded the President advising people to show respect for all thoughts.

“I am concerned about the recent developments with reference to intolerance, polarisation and spread of communal hatred resulting in the death of innocent people, rationalists. I urge the government to take serious note of these developments and initiate suitable actions,” said Naresh Dadich, former Director of Pune-based Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA).

“A highly polarised community is like a nuclear bomb close to criticality. It can explode any time and drive the nation to utter chaos. This is a highly unstable atmosphere and we should do everything in our hands to defuse the disparity, and enlighten society in scientific spirit. This is an appeal to the government to act swiftly to stop this mayhem which is victimising innocent people for eating beef, sensible people for being against superstition, RTI (Right to Information) activists or whistle blowers and many more innocent people with human values. It is not just victimising innocent and enlightened people but killing them,” G Rajasekaran, senior professor at Institute of Mathematical Sciences (IMSc), told the Gulf News.

After writers, artists, filmmakers and scientists, over 50 historians, including Romila Thapar, Irfan Habib, KN Pannikar and Mridula Mukherjee, have came out strongly against Modi for not making any reassuring statement following concerns over “highly vitiated atmosphere” prevailing in the country.

“When writer after writer is returning their award of recognition in protest, no comment is made about the conditions that caused the protest; instead the ministers call it a paper revolution and advise the writers to stop writing. This is as good as saying that intellectuals will be silenced if they protest,” historian KN Pannikar told the Gulf News.

Historian Romila Thapar believes that “what the present regime seems to want is a kind of legislated history, a manufactured image of the past, glorifying certain aspects of it and denigrating others, without any regard for chronology, sources or methods of inquiry that are the building blocks of the edifice of history. Differences of opinion are being sought to be settled by using physical violence. Arguments are met not with counter arguments but with bullets.”

The historians expressed concern over the silence of the prime minister on the issue.

“When it is hoped that the head of government will make a statement about improving the prevailing conditions, he chooses to speak only about general poverty; and it takes the head of the state to make the required reassuring statement, not once but twice,” historian Irfan Habib said.

At least 36 writers, including leading names like Nayantara Sahgal, Ashok Vajpeyi, Uday Prakash and K Veerabhadrappa have already returned their Sahitya Akademi awards, and five writers stepped down from official positions of the literary body, protesting against its “silence” over “rising intolerance”.

The key motivation for returning the awards from the Sahitya Akademi, the authors said, is its failure to publicly protest the murder of Kalburgi, allegedly by Hindu hardliners, pointing at a growing climate of intolerance that bodes ill for freedom of speech in the nation.

Writer Nayantara Sahgal, a niece of India’ first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, and who returned her award last week, told Gulf News: “Under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, we are going backwards, regressing, narrowing down to Hindutva. There is rising intolerance and lots of Indians are living in fear. Modi is absolutely silent over all these issues. He has uttered no word of condemnation at all.”

Gujarat-based poet Anil Joshi said India’s hardline politicians were spinning completely out of control. “The politicians are saying anything they want and Modi is not stopping them. People who are behind these recent killings do not have any respect for those holding different views and opinions. In that case, they would have killed Bhagat Singh too,” Joshi told Gulf News.

Returning his award, writer and poet Ganesh Devy said his decision was an expression of solidarity with several other writers, who have stated their concerns of “shrinking space for free expression and growing intolerance towards difference of opinion”.

“For the past year or so, basic values of democracy, freedom of expression, freedom to live our lives according to our wishes are under attack by the forces of Hindutva. The climate in the country is such that writers are being killed, the freedom of expression is under threat. We thought that it is high time that we returned the award,” New Delhi-based writer Mangalesh Dabral, who returned his Akademi award, told Gulf News.

Eight poets and writers from Punjab — including Surjit Patar, Jaswinder Singh, Baldev Singh Sadaknama, Gurbachan Bhullar and Waryam Sandhu — have also returned their Award, while Punjabi writer Dalip Kaur Tiwana returned her Padma Shri award.

Meanwhile, Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh has said that those who felt that intolerance levels were rising in the country should interact with the government and offer suggestions about improving the situation. He added that the government was ready to discuss the matter and take whatever action that was required.

Assuring that the government would take their suggestions seriously and will act upon them in the wake of their charge of growing intolerance in the country, he said, “returning awards is not the right thing. I request the writers and scientists to come and meet the prime minister and give their suggestions, the Union government will take concrete steps on those.”