The panel cited three reasons for its ‘suggestion’: one, Akademis are ‘apolitical’ organisations; second, political issues fall outside the ambit of culture; three, ‘award wapsi‘ brings ‘disgrace’ to the country.
The suggestion itself undermines the first two reasons, as nothing is really ‘apolitical’; they are only overtly or covertly ‘political’. And the third reason is facetious, since an awardee returning an award for whatever reason, however churlish, hardly amounts to disgracing ‘country’. It simply is a protest against the award-giver. Nothing less, nothing more.
Two of the 31 MPs on the panel rightly argued that the Constitution gives every citizen the freedom to protest, of which returning awards is a form.
Whether Sahitya Akademis, Nobels or Oscars, awards gain prestige by dint of those they choose to fete. Telling, say, Marlon Brando that he couldn’t refuse his Oscar – which he did in 1973 to protest against the treatment of Native American Indians by his countrymen – would have only turned the Oscar into a Soviet-style agitprop device. In any case, how can someone guarantee that he or she won’t return an award years after he or she gets it? Not accepting a ‘returned’ award has its own comic possibilities.
