Arundhati refuses Sahitya Akademi Award

[tahir]

Roy refuses Sahitya Akademi Award January 13,
> 2006

> Arundhati Roy refuses Sahitya Akademi Award

A letter to the Chairman 13th January 2006

> To:
> The Chairman,
> Sahitya Akademi,
> Rabindra Bhavan
> New Delhi
> Fax No. 011-23382428

> Dear Sir,
> I thank the jury of the Sahitya Akademi for giving
> me this year's Sahitya Akademi Award for my book The
> Algebra of Infinite Justice. I am proud that the
> jury felt that a collection of political essays
> deserved to be given India's most prestigious
> literary prize.
> These essays, written between 1998 and 2001, are
> deeply critical of some of the major policies of the
> Indian State—on big dams, nuclear weapons,
> increasing militarization and on economic
> neo-liberalism. However, even today this incumbent
> government shows a continuing commitment to these
> policies and is clearly prepared to implement them
> ruthlessly and violently, whatever the cost.
> In the last few months, apart from the growing
> numbers of farmers' suicides (now running into tens
> of thousands) and the forcible eviction of people
> from their lands and livelihoods (in the hundreds of
> thousands), we have witnessed the police
> brutalization of industrial workers in Gurgaon, the
> killing of a dozen people protesting against a dam
> in Manipur, and the killing of another dozen people
> protesting their displacement by a steel plant in
> Orissa. Even as we call ourselves a democracy,
> Indian security forces control and administer
> Kashmir, Manipur and Nagaland—and the numbers of the
> dead and disappeared continue to mount.
> The Algebra of Infinite Justice is also critical
> of US foreign policy, particularly in the aftermath
> of the September 11th 2001
> attacks in New York and Washington. This present
> Indian government too has seen it fit to declare
> itself an ally of the US government, thereby
> condoning the American invasion of Afghanistan and
> its illegal occupation of Iraq, which, under the
> Nuremburg principles, constitutes the supreme crime
> of a war of aggression.
> I have a great deal of respect for the Sahitya
> Akademi, for the members of this year's Jury and for
> many of the writers who have
> received these awards in the past. But to register
> my protest and re-affirm my disagreement—indeed my
> absolute disgust—with these policies of the Indian
> Government, I must refuse to accept the 2005 Sahitya
> Akademi Award.
> Sincerely,
> Arundhati Roy

[Samadam]

Salams,

Brother Tahir could you please paste a 'link' for that letter, if one is available. Thanks.

[tahir]

Br. Samadam
Waleykum Salam

Sorry, there is no link to that letter.

[Samadam]

(salam)

Thank you for replying brother. It was a very interesting read.