The Union culture ministry has been hesitant about a parliamentary committee’s recommendation to get Sahitya Akademi award winners to sign an undertaking that they will not return the literary honour for any reason, including as a political protest.

The panel informed Parliament about this in its action-taken report on Monday, saying that the ministry has expressed doubts about the legal enforceability of such undertakings.

The Union government had been responding to recommendations made by the parliamentary standing committee on culture in July 2023.

While making the recommendations, the committee had cited the “award wapsi” protest of 2015, when 39 Sahitya Akademi recipients had returned their prizes to express their dismay at the growing incidents of communal violence in the country, particularly the murder of Kannada language writer MM Kalburgi.

The panel had said that returning the winners returning their prizes to protest “certain political issues” that were “outside the ambit of the cultural realms” undermined the achievements of other awardees and “impact the overall prestige and reputation of the awards”.

The ministry said that it agreed with the panel’s “perspective and would like to avoid controversies” when it comes to returning of the awards, The Hindu reported. “However, obtaining a signed commitment from the writer prior to the award announcement would unfortunately compromise the confidentiality surrounding the selection process,” the ministry was quoted as saying.

In 2015, among those who returned their national honours was documentary filmmaker Anand Patwardhan. He had sent back his National Film Award.

Here’s what Patwardhan had written in Scroll in October 2015, explaining why he was returning his National Film Award:

National awards have always meant a lot to me. They were more precious than international awards and awards from private institutions precisely they represented those rare moments when the government of India became willing to uphold the spirit of our secular, socialist and democratic Constitution.

Today this spirit is evaporating. Our nation is at a crossroads. On one side is the secular path that our freedom fighters laid out for us and on the other, the path towards majoritarian fascism that the present regime seems bent upon. I am not saying we are already a fascist state. I am saying that the early warning signs are unmistakable.

It is the duty of all thinking citizens to speak out before it becomes too late. Filmmakers are thinking citizens who cannot look away. When the government attempted to foist unqualified saffron administrators on the FTII [Film and Television Institute of India], students there went on strike. The strike has lasted an unprecedented four months. In this period people from all walks of life began to wake up to the unmistakable reality that the India they knew was on a dangerous new path. 

The killing of rationalists, the hounding of whistleblowers like Teesta Setalvad and Sanjiv Bhatt, the denial of justice to victims of religious pogroms and caste based massacres, the emboldening of the religio-lunatic fringe and the impunity of those who kill or advocate killing in the name of religion is accompanied by the wholesale rewriting of history, the denial of scientific enquiry and the consequent production of a generation of dumbed down consumers for whom having an enemy to hate replaces their thirst for knowledge.

So it is with a heavy heart I am returning my very first National award for Bombay Our City. Back in 1985 even as we won this award the homes of people I had filmed were demolished. I did not go to receive the award. Instead Vimal Dinkar Hedau whose home in Bandra had just been demolished went to Delhi to receive this award and distributed leaflets about the cause of the homeless. The prize money went to the slumdwellers movement. Today I am returning the medal.

What do we want from this government? Not much. Just its resignation. Will that happen any time soon? Not likely. What do we want from the people of India? Not much. Just eternal vigilance.

Here is a summary of the week’s top stories.

Indians deported from the US. The 104 Indian citizens who were deported from the United States on the US military flight that arrived in Amritsar on Wednesday were shackled in keeping with past procedure, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar told Parliament.

Jaishankar was responding to questions about the deportation, including why the deportees were cuffed on their hands and legs on the flight back to India. The deportees were brought to India on a United States military aircraft.

The deportation was part of a wider crackdown by US President Donald Trump’s administration, which has used military aircraft to repatriate undocumented migrants. This was the first military deportation of Indian citizens since Trump returned to office.

The external affairs minister emphasised that the process of deportation was not new. He shared data from India’s Bureau of Immigration showing that 15,668 Indians have been deported from the United States since 2009.

The Opposition raised the matter in Parliament, saying that Indian citizens had been mistreated by US authorities while being deported.

Washington has informed New Delhi that 487 presumed Indians had received “final removal orders” so far, the Ministry of External Affairs said on Friday.

Also read: Ageing population, shrinking workforce: Why anti-immigrant measures by the Global North won’t last

Who rules the national capital? Delhi Lieutenant Governor VK Saxena ordered an investigation into the Aam Aadmi Party’s allegations that the Bharatiya Janata Party was trying to poach its election candidates. This came after AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal alleged that the BJP had offered Rs 15 crore to 16 of the party’s candidates and promised them ministerial posts if they defected.

The Assembly polls took place on Wednesday. The results will be declared on Saturday.

The BJP had complained about Kejriwal’s allegations to Saxena, describing them as “false and baseless”. It demanded that the police look into the claims.

On Friday, the anti-corruption branch asked the AAP chief for details of the 16 candidates who were allegedly offered bribes.

Kejriwal, on his part, accused the Election Commission of refusing to upload Form 17C, which is a record of voter turnout in every polling station, on its official website. The AAP launched a website where it uploaded Form 17C provided to it for all constituencies.

Most exit polls have projected that the BJP will defeat the AAP in the Assembly polls.

Follow Scroll’s coverage of the Delhi Assembly polls here.

The economic situation. The Indian rupee fell past 87 against the United States dollar, sinking to an all-time low amid a slump in Asian currencies after US President Donald Trump’s new tariffs. The rupee dropped to 87.29 on Monday, before falling plummeting further to 87.57 on Thursday.

The rupee remains under pressure due to foreign fund outflows and higher US dollar demand from oil importers, according to experts. Foreign institutional investors sold shares valued at $32.6 billion on a gross basis in January, with a net outflow of $7.6 billion.

Free and fair polls. Congress leader Rahul Gandhi asked the Election Commission to explain how Maharashtra had more registered voters in the 2024 Assembly election than the state’s adult population. He also urged the poll panel to explain why more voters were added to the state’s electoral rolls in the five-month period between the 2024 Lok Sabha election and the Assembly polls than in the preceding five years.

In the 2024 Assembly election, there were 9.7 crore registered voters, even though the state’s adult population was 9.54 crore, according to the Congress leader.

The general election took place in April and May, followed by the state polls in November. The BJP-led coalition had suffered a setback in the parliamentary polls in Maharashtra, but went on to win the Assembly elections by a landslide just months later.

Also on Scroll this week

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