After eminent writers Nayantara Sahgal and Ashok Vajpeyi, Malayalam novelist and Aam Aadmi Party leader Sarah Joseph today said she would return the Sahitya Akademi award in protest against what she called the "growing communalism" and "life threat faced by writers" in the country after Narendra Modi government assumed office.
Sarod maestro Amjad Ali Khan and Santoor exponent Shivkumar Sharma were among the recipients of Sangeet Natak Akademy fellowship and awards given to 47 eminent persons by President Pranab Mukherjee in New Delhi on Tuesday.
Booker Prize winning author Salman Rushdie joined the growing chorus of protests by leading writers against spread of "communal poison" and "rising intolerance" in the country even as seven more authors decided to return their Sahitya Akademi awards.
The Delhi HC asked the Centre to produce record related to writers who returned their Sahitya Akademi awards.
Three eminent writers from Punjab announced that they were returning their Sahitya Akademi awards, while Kannada writer Aravind Malagatti resigned from the body's general council, joining the growing protest by litterateurs over "rising intolerance" and "communal" atmosphere.
She turned down the award in protest against the Indian government toeing the United States line.
In a letter to Secretary of Sahitya Akademi on Wednesday, Bhardwaj, also attached a cheque of Rs 50,000 which he got with the award in 2004.
Ramanunni had received an anonymous threat letter warning him that his right arm and left leg would be chopped off if he did not convert to Islam within six months.
Tamil writer S Balasubramanian and Marathi playwright Mahesh Elkunchwar are also among the 22 litterateurs selected.
Noted Bengali writer Sunil Gangopadhyay was on Wednesday elected the new president of the Sahitya Akademi, considered India's most prestigious literary post. Gangopadhyay defeated noted Malayalam writer and Jnanpith award winner M T Vasudevan Nair by five votes in the election for the post of president of the Akademi. In an election for the post, necessitated after lack of consensus in the 89-member general council, Gangopadhyay bagged 45 voted while Nair got 40 votes.
Eminent litterateur and Sahitya Akademi President Sunil Gangopadhyay died at his South Kolkata residence in the early hours on Tuesday following a massive heart attack. He was 78.
Akademi Secretary K Sachidanand said they are trying to make her reconsider.
Engineer-turned-philanthropist Sudha Murty on Thursday took oath as Rajya Sabha MP in the presence of her husband N R Narayana Murthy.
A memorandum presented to President A P J Abdul Kalam by the artistes, including vice-chairperson K N Pannikar and Carnatic vocalist Balamurali Krishna, said: "From day one, Sonal Mansingh went on a steamroller trip of taking unilateral decisions."
He beat Jnanpith award winner Mahashweta Devi.
Ria Vithasha, 17, known by her pen name Muddu Thirthahalli, returned her Karnataka Sahitya Akademi award.
'I don't feel like going back to India, to the old Delhi that I grew up in. Because the place doesn't exist anymore.'
A group of protesters on Saturday marched to the office of a Malayalam vernacular magazine in New Delhi raising slogans, claiming that a novel serialised in the publication defamed Hindu women and the Brahmin community.
An ensemble of musicians, some of whom played sursingar, mohan veena, dilruba and other rare instruments, regaled G20 world leaders during the ceremonial dinner hosted for them by President Droupadi Murmu.
The police on Thursday booked litterateur Hiren Gohain, Krishak Mukti Sangram Samiti chief Gogoi and senior journalist Manjit Mahanta under sedition charges for their comments on the Citizenship Amendment Bill.
The last date to fill the online application for a CPL course at IGRUA is April 23, 2023.
The new Ram Lalla idol was consecrated at the Ayodhya temple on Monday, an event led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and watched by lakhs of people on television at their homes and in temples across the country.
Poet Ashok Vajpeyi on Friday said he won't participate in a cultural festival as he was scheduled to because the organisers asked him not to read poems critical of the government. A spokesperson from the Rekhta Foundation, which is co-organiser of the session, denied his claim that he was being censored.
'Bahut mazaa aaya tha doing Agneepath. When you are working with good actors, it enriches your acting.' 'Amitabhji and I had done Shahenshah before, but that was a fun film.'
Ahead of the state assembly elections due this year-end, Baghel made as many as 15 announcements in his address during the state-level Independence Day function at the Police Parade ground in Raipur.
They all seem to forget that the Music Academy is as much an independent institution as T M Krishna is an individual musician. In drawing those red lines for the Academy management, they do not even seem to recognise that they too have crossed a red line themselves, points out N Sathiya Moorthy.
'If someone were to ask you if you want to die tomorrow, no matter what problems you are grappling with, you would be hesitant, right?'
'Religion has divided our country like it never had done.' 'I can't remember a time of such focused hatred.'
'In India those who want change cannot bring about change, and those who can bring about change do not want change.'
'Does anyone understand India?' 'Does anyone have a larger perspective for India as a whole?' 'Today we have rulers who do not understand the ruled.'
Mukesh was most emotionally bonded to this tune, so all we will do is look at his songs engaging with this raag in films. In his fascinating book, Windows To The Soul: And Other Essays on Music, Manek Premchand reveals something we don't much know about the legendary singer, who was born 100 years ago on July 22.
Professor TJ Joseph, whose hand was chopped off by activists of the Popular Front of India for alleged blasphemy 12 years ago, on Wednesday declined to respond to the Centre's ban on the radical Islamic outfit, saying observing silence was better at times than always talking.
Indian author Perumal Murugan's Tamil novel Pyre is among 13 books from across Asia, Africa, Europe and Latin America to make it to the longlist of the International Booker Prize 2023, announced by the Booker Prize Foundation in London on Tuesday.
Two years ago this day, Astad Deboo, dancer extraordinaire, passed into the ages. A new exhibition Breaking Boundaries remembers the pioneer who redrew the margins of Indian dance.
'It was Maulana Azad's foresight which created the IITs, UGC, science academies across the country.'
Nagarkar, a Sahitya Akademi Award winner, had been ailing for some time and was admitted to a hospital in south Mumbai where he died at night, hospital sources said.
Noted poet K Satchidanandan has alleged that he was restrained by Facebook from liking, commenting and sharing posts for 24-hours after he tried to upload online a satire video on the Bharatiya Janata Party's defeat in the recently concluded Kerala assembly polls.
'I am not in favour of the hijab myself.' 'I personally think it wrong to make women shut themselves out of the world, where there is so much to see.' 'But I can't dictate to others about what they should wear.'
"I have decided to return the award. The minorities in the country are feeling unsafe and threatened. They feel their future is bleak," Khayal said.
'Farewell to the unique artist who loved like a mother and taught many things like a teacher.'
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