http://linkis.com/www.mumbaimirror.com/qHES7
RAHMAN ABBAS TURNS DOWN SAHITYA AKADEMI PLEA, WON’T TAKE BACK AWARD
By Jyoti Punwani, Mumbai Mirror | Oct 25, 2015, 12.00 AM IST
Novelist Rahman Abbas (left); Abbas speaking at Thadomal Shahani
Centre for Management on Friday
*Novelist says the state is uninterested in curbing extremist groups,
fears India will turn into Pakistan.*
Rahman Abbas, the novelist who returned his state Urdu Sahitya Akademi
Award to protest against the murders of Narendra Dabholkar and Govind
Pansare, has said he is disinclined to take it back despite entreaties
from the national academy of letters to do so. Abbas told Mumbai
Mirror that he would confer with other writers to gauge their reaction
to the Sahitya Akademi's plea.
"The government seems uninterested in curbing the organisations behind
the killings. Spokespersons of these organisations air their views
arrogantly on TV. First they killed Gandhi, now we are seeing Gandhi's
killers being raised on a pedestal," Abbas said, referring to the
killings of the two rationalists - Pansare was shot dead in February
this year and Dabholkar in August 2013; both were vocal in their
opposition to extremist Hindu groups, and were killed in a similar
manner.
Twenty-six years before he returned the Sahitya Akademi award to
protest against "today's era of darkness where people are killed
because they think differently", Abbas, a teenager, participated in a
morcha organised by the Students Islamic Movement of India against
Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses, in 1989. The processionists carried
placards that said "Kill Rushdie". The morcha ended in police firing
in which 11 protestors died.
Abbas had first-hand experience of state censorship when his first
novel, Nakhalistan ki Talaash (2004), had an obscenity charge slapped
on it for which he had to spend two nights in Arthur Road jail.
"That's where I realised the value of writing and how much you have to
sacrifice for it," he said. The case is still pending.
His three novels take on issues confronting Indian Muslims.
Nakhalistan ki Talaashis the story of a Muslim student dealing with
his first love, and the forces out to radicalise him after the 1992-93
Mumbai riots and the Kashmir azadi struggle. An Urdu professor in a
Mumbai college asked his students to read it; one of them found the
novel's love scenes offensive, and the Urdu press raged against him.
The controversy led to Abbas having to resign from his teaching job
after a delegation led by a minister met the management. "When so many
long-bearded fellows land up, what can one do," the chairman of the
institution had defended himself to Abbas.
The same minister handed him the State Sahitya Akademi Award for his
third novel, Khuda ke saaye mein aankh micholi (2011) which describes
the dilemma of an atheist, "struggling to live with and without god".
Abbas' second novel Ek Mamnua Muhabbat Ki Kahani (2009) deals with a
phenomenon rarely discussed: the "purification" of Konkani Muslims.
Hailing from Chiplun, Abbas has seen "the region's composite culture,
where everyone went to dargahs, there was no purdah, and shehnai
played at all weddings, change over the last 20 years into a Middle
Eastern Wahabi culture, thanks to the Tableeghi Jamaat. They are
killing India's inclusive culture as much as the RSS is.''
Abbas is hopeful, however. Replying to questions by students at the
Thadomal Shahani Centre for Media and Communications on Friday, where
he had been invited by the Media and Communications Centre, Abbas
quoted the Upanishads on the primacy of the word ("shabd"), and
pointed out that for the first time, "#Sahitya Akademi" was trending
in social media.
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Peace Is Doable
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