Arundhati Roy refuses Sahitya Akademi Award.

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A

Fri, 27 Jan 2006 18:17:51 +0600

Arundhati Roy refuses Sahitya Akademi Award.....

 

 

 

Comrades and friends of South Asia,

She deserves a grand salute from you as she registered her name along

with those exceptional few who always hated to barter their

principles with fame and financial gains.

 

Her refusal exposed the criminal link between the US imperialism and

Indian hegemonist expansionism.

 

A.....

 

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http://www.southendpress.org/news/news4

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

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