On the day the Centre announced various Padma awards, writer Jeyamohan wrote a blog post claiming he had been told he would be conferred with a Padma Shri, but he refused to accept it.
In the post, he defended his decision to refuse the award, saying that he did not want to lend credibility to the suggestion that he was writing ‘Venmurasu’ – an attempt to retell the Mahabharatha in the novel form—with an eye on the award. “My stand is not against the government since I always believe that toeing a political line is against the nature of a writer,” Mr. Jeyamohan had posted on his website. Mr. Jeyamohan said his objective was to ensure that ‘Venmurasu’ remained a creative literature and nothing should be allowed to demean it.
