The Bollywood disconnect

The past few weeks has been a season of the so-called 'awards wapsi' in India. It began when more than 35 of the country's leading authors and poets returned their awards to the Sahitya Akademi, India's national academy of letters. These are awards that are prestigious symbols of literary achievement. The move came as a protest against the literary body's silence on the murder of rationalist and writer M M Kalburgi (a receipient of the Akademi Award), and incidents like the lynching of a Muslim man in Dadri, near Delhi, for allegedly eating beef. Writer after writer returned their award to protest what they saw as assaults on free speech and dissent. Nayantara Sehgal, who was among the first to return her award, wrote that her gesture was "In memory of the Indians who have been murdered, in support of all Indians who uphold the right to dissent, and of all dissenters who now live in fear and uncertainty".

After an unseemly delay, these protests were finally acknowledged by the Akademi, which issued a resolution condemning the murder of Professor Kalburgi and other intellectuals. By this time, however, reverberations from this unprecedented movement were felt across the country and abroad. This gesture of dissent by writers was soon followed by a letter of protest by various artists, as well as by leading scientists who returned their honours. A group of ten filmmakers (including Anand Patwardhan, Dibakar Banerjee, Nishtha Jain and Rakesh Sharma) too issued a powerful statement and returned their National Awards. Their criticisms were wide ranging, addressing the government's "stonewalling" of students protesting the appointment of officials at Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) in Pune, and the growing intolerance in India. However, in Mumbai's mainstream film-industry circles, these events may as well not have happened.