The Hindu : New Delhi News : Akademi elections: pressure on second-timers to pull out

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Sunday, Dec 23, 2007
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Akademi elections: pressure on second-timers to pull out

Anita Joshua

Concern over growing irregularities in the Akademi

NEW DELHI: With outgoing Sahitya Akademi president Gopi Chand Narang filing his nomination for a second term, pressure is mounting on him to withdraw his candidature in deference to long-accepted convention.

After individual appeals from eminent writers like Mahasweta Devi and U. R. Ananthamurthy fell on deaf ears, 50 writers have now petitioned Union Culture Minister Ambika Soni and come out with a statement to ensure that Prof. Narang does not get a second term.

The move is gaining momentum as the general council and executive board of the Akademi are scheduled to meet on December 26 to finalise the candidates for the presidential elections due in February 2008. Besides Prof. Narang, the main contender for the post is Malayalam writer M. T. Vasudevan Nair.

There are a couple of other candidates but insiders claim they are in the fray as dummy candidates of Prof. Narang to ensure that Mr. Nair does not make it to the final shortlist of three.

‘Falling standards’

Expressing concern over the falling standards and growing irregularities in the Akademi, 50 writers — representing 12 languages — have sought to underline the fact that “no writer in the past has ever expressed his or her desire to be re-elected as president of the Akademi.” Describing it as a “healthy convention,” they pointed out that no writer had tried to violate this norm in the past. And, it was because of this convention that the “Akademi has always been free from the domination of one individual from any language.”

Referring to the last general council meeting held in Goa in October — when the new general council was constituted — the signatories to the statement said the provisions to give representation to the best talent in all Indian languages were distorted arbitrarily by vested interests to “help the present president get re-elected.” To drive home this point, they said eminent literary figures such as Girish Karnad, Amitav Ghosh and Rajendra Yadav were ignored despite their names being proposed while reconstituting the general council in favour of writers “hardly known in their own languages.”

Letter to Narang

Early last week, in a letter to Prof. Narang, the former Akademi president, U.R. Ananthamurthy, urged him not to seek re-election; stating that it would not be proper for him to ask for votes from a General Council constituted under his presidentship.

Citing convention, he said: “No one should be president for more than one term for there are many languages in India and all of them should get a chance to get one of their writers as president.” A similar view had been expressed by Mahasweta Devi soon after the Goa meeting. Mahasweta Devi is also among the 50 signatories — many of them Akademi fellows or awardees — to the statement sent to the Culture Minister. The signatories include Krishna Sobti, Ashok Vajpeyi, Vishnu Khare, Pankaj Bisht, H. S. Shivaprakash, K. Satchidanandan and Kedarnath Singh.

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