BJP should analyse instead of blaming writers, says Congress

New Delhi: Congress leader Rashid Alvi on Thursday said that the NDA Government at Centre, along with other BJP leaders, instead of blaming the eminent writers of the country, should analyse why they are returning their Sahitya Akademi Award.

"The BJP leaders are not realising their mistakes. Whether it is Gujarat incident or Dadri incident, they are not realising their mistake. Writers are the image of the society and they are not affiliated to any political party. They (Writers) do not stand up with people, who want to break the society. The Government should have tried to analyse why they(writers) are returning their awards, but instead, they are blaming the writers," Alvi told ANI here.

"It's not just the Finance Minister blaming the writers, but it is also the RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat who said that (yeh log secular logo ke haatho mein khel rahe hai)the writers are playing into the hands of secularist. This means that the RSS chief is not secular, the government is not secular. If the people are not secular, then they do not deserve to live in this country," Alvi added.

Questioning the writers in a Facebook post titled 'A manufactured revolt - Politics by other means,' over returning of awards conferred on them by the Sahitya Academy, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Wednesday had asked, "Is this protest real or a manufactured one? Is this not a case of ideological intolerance?"

"The thrust of the writers' protest appears to be that under the present Central Government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, an atmosphere of intolerance has been created in the country," Jaitley said.

Several eminent writers have announced recently that they were returning their Sahitya Akademi awards, joining the growing protest by litterateurs over "rising intolerance" and "communal" atmosphere, and the "silence" of the Sahitya Akademi over the killing of Kannada scholar M. M. Kalburgi.