Nayantara Sahgal :It is not possible to RSS to recognize progressive writers

New Delhi, April 30:India's foremost writers with feminist concerns, Nayantara Sahgal of 89 years old returned her Sahitya Akademi award in 2015 to protest against rising intolerance in the country. Will she ever accept a recognition from the state again? Never!
Sahitya Akademi Award for which she received the 1986 extensively acclaimed author of the novel "Rich Like Us".She said it is not possible for them to recognise progressive writers like her to the RSS government."I have never, all my life, stood in line for any award, any job or anything. And I would certainly not do so under this regime" said in interview.

The Akademi, according to Sahgal, did not say anything when a Sahitya Akademi award winner, Narendra Dabholkar, was murdered. If they have done anything at all to protect the rights of the authors and rational thinkers, the author said, it must have been very silent.

"It is not a threat any more, there has been a murder. Three writers have been killed! (Perumal) Murugan was hounded out of his home, he was on pain of death, that if you stay here we will kill you, we will kill your family. People are in danger of their lives if they disagree with their Hindutva ideology and these so called gau-rakshaks," Sahgal immediately responded.

The former advisor to Sahitya Akademi's Board for English from 1972 to 1975 went on to say that her writings have been inspired by the times she grew up in. With her mother Vijayalakshmi Pandit as India's first ambassador to the U.N., her uncle Jawaharlal Nehru as first Prime Minister, and her cousin, Indira Gandhi as third Prime Minister, it is not surprising that politics and history inspire and underlie much of her writing.Sahgal further said that religion is not a state affair, it is rather a matter of one's personal choice and one's personal relationship with god.

"The state can't tell you to do this and that with regard to religion. That was a very precious inheritance where all Indians felt equal and felt safe. Now I am sorry to say that the minorities do not feel safe, in particular the Muslim community is being hounded, persecuted and killed. That is not accepted by any civilised Indian," she added.

The much-acclaimed author also said that she often hears the Prime Minister making a "very fine speech", but on the ground, something else is happening.
"The ruling establishment, the Prime Minister himself, should make it very clear, and make it clear not only in speech but practice, that these things cannot be allowed to happen in a democracy where it is our constitutional right to speak and practise what we choose to," she said.

All changes from the times that she grew up in to now are, fortunately, not unpleasant. Sahgal recalled that when she began writing in the 1950s the Indian publishing industry was very small and was competing against leading international publishers. Writers today, she said, can be published more easily than ever before.
Apart from the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1986, she has also received the Sinclair Prize (Britain) for fiction in 1985 and the Commonwealth Writers Award (Eurasia) in 1987. She was also a Fellow of the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars, Washington, from 1981 to 1982.