Madhushree Dutta (from left), Saeed Mirza, Kundan Shah and Irene Malik Dhar, who are among Indian film industry figures returning National Film Awards, pose before the media in Mumbai on Thursday. — AP
Madhushree Dutta (from left), Saeed Mirza, Kundan Shah and Irene Malik Dhar, who are among Indian film industry figures returning National Film Awards, pose before the media in Mumbai on Thursday. — AP
Saeed Mirza, a former FTII chairman known for films like Albert Pinto Ko Gussa Kyoon Aata Hai and TV show Nukkad, said the protest started by the students has become bigger as has the movement against “intolerance, divisiveness and hate”.
Writer Arundhati Roy returned her National Award best screenplay which she received for In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones in 1989. Other noted names in the list include documentary filmmaker Anwar Jamal, director Virendra Saini, Pradip Krishnen, Manoj Lobo, sound designers Vivek Sachidanand, P.M. Satheesh, Ajay Raina, director Sudhakar Reddy Yakkanti, editor Irene Dhar Malik, cinematographer Satya Rai Nagpaul, director Amitabh Chakraborty, filmmaker Tapan Bose and Madhusree Dutta.
Meanwhile, speaking at the release of a compilation of articles that defended the government and questioned the protesting intellectuals, Union minister Venkaiah Naidu said, “The ongoing campaign is a clear effort to derail the development momentum created by the energetic efforts of the Prime Minister. We have a vested interest in keeping the atmosphere of tolerance in our country because development is possible only in such a situation.”
“Are we unwise that we will ourselves destroy our mission of development,” he added. The articles, bunched in a booklet titled Know the Truth: Some are Misled, Some are Misleading”, have been written by a host of writers. “Why were the so-called intellectuals silent then and violent now,” it asks, dubbing the campaign as “nothing but an ideological intolerance”.
Though BJP president Amit Shah was present on the occasion, he did not make any comment at the event organised at the party office, saying he would speak to the media on September 8, when the Bihar Assembly election results are out.
However, the Modi government got support from a group of writers, academicians and artistes who dismissed the protests over alleged rising intolerance as “much ado” by a “pampered section”. Hitting out at the intellectuals attacking the Centre over “the climate of intolerance”, they said a section of the nation’s intelligentsia was dismayed by Mr Modi’s victory in the Lok Sabha polls and “failure in the elections is now sought to be avenged by other means”.
Indian Council for Cultural Relations president Lokesh Chandra, author S.L. Bhyrappa, Kapil Kapoor, former pro-vice-chancellor, JNU, Dilip K. Chakrabarti, professor emeritus, University of Cambridge and ICHR member, and K. Gopinath of IISC are among 36 intellectuals who lent support to the BJP-led government in a statement and lashed out at the protesters. They said the Central government cannot be blamed for incidents like the Dadri lynching. They said the murders of rationalist N. Dabholkar and Kannada scholar N.N. Kalburgi happened in Congress-ruled states.
The intellectuals said this same intelligentsia which was attacking the Modi government chose not to remember that there has been no justice for victims of the anti-Sikh pogrom of 1984 and the farmers killed in Nandigram in 2007 under the Congress and Left governments, respectively.
Taking strong objection to an AMU scholar equating the RSS with the ISIS, they called it a “breathtaking” remark which embarrassed intellectuals from his own community. Other signatories to the statement include Kerala poet and Sahitya Akademi awardee Akkitham Achuthan Namboothiri, Karnataka poet Sumatheendra R. Nadigt, ICHR member Purabi Roy, ICHR member Meenakshi Jain, and Santisree Pandit of the University of Pune.
