A resignation can be a powerful form of protest. It says I do not stand with you, and I cannot lend my name to an institution that endorses views or attitudes with which I am not in consonance. A resignation could also be an act of hope: it is submitted with the expectation that it will sting the institution into the taking the desired course of action. In many ways, a resignation is a very positive “no”.
Over the last month, the literary community has raised its voice against the rising tide of intolerance, with 15 writers returning their Sahitya Akademi Awards. They brought up the murder of rationalist MM Kalburgi, who was also an award winner, the lynching of Mohammad Akhlaq in Dadri and the Akademi’s continuing silence in the face of such grievous wrong. In response, Akademi chairperson Viswanath Prasad Tiwari said that protesting against curbs on freedom of speech would only distract the establishment from its “primary work” and request that they refrain from politicising the Akademi. On Sunday, he amended his statement. The Akademi was committed to the freedom of expression and the "core secular" values inscribed in the Constitution, Tiwari said.
But figures from the literary establishment had already begun to break rank. Poet K Satchidanandan resigned from the Akademi’s executive board and general council. Critic KS Ravikumar as well as writers Shashi Deshpande and Arvind Malagatti also quit the council. In her letter of resignation, Deshpande wrote that the Akademi’s “silence is a form of abetment” and since it had failed to stand up for its community of writers and scholars, she could no longer continue as part of the institution.
That point is well taken. But who, in the absence of these individuals, is to steer the literary establishment towards becoming a “space for discussion and debate in public life”, as Deshpande hopes it will be? By bowing out, these writers and critics may have ceded space to people who see no wrong in the Akademi’s preferred stance of aloofness, and might even be in sympathy with the growing orthodoxy in public life.
This concern is sharpened by the fact that, over the last year, the government has steadily encroached on the autonomy of academic and cultural institutions, filling up councils and governing bodies with individuals who had dubious qualifications for the job, close ties to the ruling party and professional interests that inevitably shaded into saffron. The men inducted into the country's premier institutions include Y Sudarshan Rao, the new head of the Indian Council for Historical Research, whose main academic pursuit is to prove that the Mahabharata was a historical event, not a myth; Gajendra Chauhan, appointed as the chairman of the Film and Television Institute of India, whose theatrical skills include playing Yudhishthira in the popular Mahabharat TV series and campaigning for the Bharatiya Janata Party; A Sethumadhavan, head of the National Book Trust and former editor of Panchajanya, a Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh publication. Governments placing sympathisers in influential positions is old hat in this country. But it has rarely been done with such little effort at maintaining even the appearance of due process.
As spaces for thought and expression fall to the governing orthodoxy, it is vital that the literary establishment remain independent. For that it would need independent voices like Deshpande, Satchidanandan, Malagatti and Ravikumar. Beyond the gesture of resignation, too, lies silence.