Arundhati Roy newest addition to list of writers returning awards

Arundhati Roy has joined the list of writers and artists returning the awards received by them to protest against the growing intolerance in the country. In an article titled ‘Why I am returning my award’, published in The Indian Express  on Thursday, Roy wrote: “I am very pleased to have found (from somewhere way back in my past) a National Award that I can return, because it allows me to be part of a political movement initiated by writers, filmmakers and academics in this country.” She had won a National Award for Best Screenplay in 1989 for the film, In Which Annie Gives it Those Ones .

Roy criticised the central government and an environment of intolerance by saying “Today, we live in a country in which, when the thugs and apparatchiks of the New Order talk of ‘illegal slaughter’, they mean the imaginary cow that was killed — not the real man who was murdered. When they talk of taking ‘evidence for forensic examination’ from the scene of the crime, they mean the food in the fridge, not the body of the lynched man.”

Also a Booker prize winner (for her novel The God of Small Things ), Roy said: “Intolerance”, a wrong word to depict the lynching and “mass murder of fellow human beings.” She appreciated what the writers and activists were doing by returning their awards, and said it was “unprecedented and does not have historical parallel”. She expressed concerns that, "censorship has been outsourced to the mob."

Making it clear that she was no supporter of the opposition Congress, or a critic of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, she ended the article by saying: “For the record, I turned down the Sahitya Akademi Award in 2005, when the Congress was in power. So, please spare me that old Congress-versus-BJP debate. It has gone way beyond all that. Thanks.”