‘Award wapsi by artists, writers aimed at defaming nation’

Even as 24 more artists, writers and filmmakers — including Saeed Mirza, Kundan Shah, Arundhati Roy, Sanjay Kak, Pradeep Krishen and Virendra Saini — returned their national awards in protest against “intolerance” and weakening of institutions, the BJP hit back, accusing them and other writers of “defaming the ruling party and defaming the country.”

BJP president Amit Shah released a booklet titled Why The So-Called Intellectuals Silent Then & Violent Now – It’s Nothing But An Ideological Intolerance (sic). The booklet is a collection of articles by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, who, along with journalists Dhananjay Mahapatra, Swapan Dasgupta and Tavleen Singh, and others including Firoz Bakht Ahmed and S Gurumurthy, has described the artists’ protest as “manufactured revolt”.

Dependents on Cong Describing the intellectuals as “dependents of the Congress”, whose protest reflects their frustration at the growing influence of the BJP, a statement released on behalf of Amit Shah said their actions are aimed at “defaming the country”.

“For the last sixty years or so the Congress and its dependents have been in power at the Centre and in most of the States and they have an octopus-like presence in most of the academic and cultural institutions. The Left intellectuals had a field day since they were the beneficiaries of patronisation by the Congress… Now with the change of regime and an alternative view is emerging (sic). That is why they are frustrated,” said the statement.

“Credibility of the country is being subjected to being damaged due to some people glorifying isolated local incidents and some people trying to convert it into a political weapon to defame the ruling party, thus defaming the country…Political intolerance is the genetic trait of Congress,” read the statement.

Anti-Khan The BJP president refrained from commenting on or condemning statements by his party general secretary Kailash Vijayvarghiya and MP Yogi Aditiyanath, who have attacked actor Shah Rukh Khan for speaking out against growing incidents of religious intolerance.

Meanwhile, in a signed letter to President Pranab Mukherjee and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, filmmakers said: “We have watched with disappointment how the ruling party’s leaders and supporters abused these filmmakers and belittled their gesture.

“This has been the consistent response of the powers that be, towards the writers, academics, scientists, filmmakers, historians and artists who have expressed their dismay over the increasing climate of intolerance.”

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