SAHITYA AKADEMI AWARDS ROW: Power Comes A-Knocking, or Writers Go Knocking at Power’s Door?

Both truths define our times — Right Wing is stifling independent voices, and pen-pushers are in transactional negotiations with power

IN A PUNJABI piece headlined “Power Knocking on the Doors of Writers,” Swarajbir, a respected intellectual, former editor of Punjabi Tribune, and retired DGP, invokes the greats — Kālidāsa, Socrates, Giordano Bruno — to make a grand case for the moral independence of writers.

In an elegant sweep through literary history, he reminds us of the timeless struggle of the creative spirit against authority. Yet beneath the mantle of philosophical reflection lies a far more prosaic concern: the delayed announcement of the Sahitya Akademi awards, allegedly held up because a government secretary has not yet signed the notification.

The Sahitya Akademi is India’s National Academy of Letters, a body whose awards are among the most prestigious honours Indian writers can receive, across 24 languages including Punjabi.

Over the years, however, its shine has dulled in some quarters, with critics pointing to controversies over jury biases and group loyalties. Yet even in such debates, it remains a badge of recognition that writers across the country take seriously.

When lofty metaphors mask quiet lobbying

Swarajbir’s piece gestures at grand historic resistance — citing Kālidāsa’s artistic brilliance, Socrates’ defiance of institutional powers, and Giordano Bruno’s martyrdom in the face of suppressive orthodoxy — and then collapses this constellation of struggles into a plea for bureaucratic action: please announce the awards.

When power is said to knock, but writers are the ones knocking on power’s doors

There is an undeniable intelligence and lyrical quality to his writing, but the mismatch between rhetorical scale and actual purpose is jarring. When the highest metaphors of dissent are marshalled in service of a request for timely signing of files, the rhetoric feels less like high moral discourse and more like strategic advocacy.

Reportedly, the jury has finalised certain names, including that of a poseur writer who is backed more by ChatGPT, AI and Google Translate skills, and is known for uttering a mishmash of concerns and visions of an AI future, and is a known fixer in literary circles.

With a rather inglorious past, including a stint behind bars, such a person could have been a pariah, but his ability to slither through power corridors has made him a useful handyman for far better endowed writers and writer unions.

Unsurprisingly, his inclusion in the list of putative awardees also comes at a time when leading “trade unionists” of the Punjabi world are pushing for a Padma Shri for another dubious poet-painter who was able to corner a coveted post in Punjab’s art world.

“Uss nu kujh ta dena hai na, Sahitya Akademi wala award ta pehla hi hai uhde kol,” (he has to be given something, since he already has a Sahitya Akademi Award) a leading writer told Punjab Today, revealing many insider but heartbreaking tales from the murky world of authors.

But irrespective of whether these names ultimately appear in the official list of Padma Shris or Sahitya Akademi Awards, the subtext of Swarajbir’s article becomes unmistakable: this is, in effect, a gentle canvassing for an award for a friend.

That the pleading is wrapped in references to classic thinkers does not change the fact that the piece’s trajectory is from esteemed literary philosophy to an appeal for state patronage.

Strangely, Swarajbir’s piece — as also many of those shouting hoarse about right-wing conspiracies — has chosen to remain silent about the extremely murky details of how awards are decided in Punjabi writers’ world.

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Writers like Mitter Sen Meet, himself a recipient of the prestigious national Sahitya Akademi Award (2008) for his novel Sudhar Ghar, and others have even dragged writers’ bodies to court over selection criteria and transparency norms.

Between martyrdom and mundane bargaining lies today’s literary truth

Such a dynamic says something larger about the state of literary life today. Instead of writers standing apart from authority, critiquing, challenging, and resisting power’s whims, one is underwhelmed to see respected literary figures knocking on power’s doors — not in protest, but in request.

“If the Sahitya Akademi Award has any remaining lustre of dignity, it is not burnt by government delay alone, but by pieces that borrow the language of resistance to advocate for individual interest,” said a recently retired professor of English in a Punjab university.

One doubts little Swarajbir’s eloquence, or his sincere engagement with literature and culture. It’s not about his ability to summon the spirit of Kālidāsa, Socrates, and Bruno, but about the decision to arraign these worthies in service of a cause so petty.

If only a secretary had signed the awardees’ list in time, Kālidāsa, Socrates, Bruno et al might well have continued to rest in heaven.

Conflating genuine struggle with routine institutional and transactional negotiations with powers-that-be shows how literature, literary pursuits, and men and women of letters can prefer the transient over the sublime.

Writers deserve respect, autonomy, and recognition, but they must also be bound to pursue an honest discourse.

When prestigious names from world literature are placed rhetorically in the same bracket as contemporary preferences informed by partisan friendships, then the literary community stands accused of failing to have a candid conversation about purpose, integrity, and the meaning of honour in our time.

Wordsmithery employed in service of beseeching knocks on the doors of power is not an act of resistance, but a vain plea for validation. That, and not the high metaphors and references that Swarajbir’s piece invokes, is the real and more telling commentary on our literary moment.
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